Douglas Adams’ ghost presents a thirty-five-year-old's "definite" top 9 games of the 21st century in release order

1 Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2 Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it.

3 Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

-----Douglas Adams’ Three Rules of Technology

Back in 2012, I bought a ridiculous omnibus volume called the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Composed of 5 books, it’s thick but at least light due to being a paperback. I didn’t read through it until 2025, when for the first time since I got an Xbox 360 I got no new game I look forward to during the Lunar New Year vacation.

I opened the August, 2025 issue of Science Fiction World and on first page was greeted by Adams’ tongue-in-cheek statement quoted above. Suddenly one probable reason for my disinterest in recent video games came up: I just might get too old for this shit. No, not in an outgrowing video game sense. Just that my capacity to care about a media form that generally provides little compared to how much it charges goes down as my age goes up.

Well, that was jumping directly to the third rule. Then yours truly looked at the second rule, recalled the votes I cast for the site’s quarter century list and felt seen by the ghost of Douglas Adams. Yes, sir, most of those I voted for did come out between when I was fifteen and thirty-five.

My birthday is January, 18^th. As the time of writing, I am about halfway through towards my thirty-sixth. While I am an advocate against spoiler culture, the foreknowledge I got about Clair Obscure through Bombcast did ruin any chance I would play that oh so well-received game. If it’s all just in [REDACATED], then why should I give a shit? Shame that the game is one of rare “Powered by UE5” things with good art direction and somewhat compelling for many storytelling.

13 years were a hell of time. To think that my 22-year-old self thought Greg Miller had no business to be in this business for yelling "Where is my real ending, Mass Effect (3)?". Oh well, I do not agree completely with Jeff Grestmann's "It's bit weak sauce for jiggling too many balls" take but at least he was fair enough for stating reasons that I saw as well. It's just that my conclusion was "Coulda been worse".

Anyway, after putting more thoughts into it, I decided to give this century list of mine a proper treatment. I would remove the token Mario game for something I genuinely like. And no licensed things regardless of quality just to reflect my feeling in the year of our Lord twenty twenty-five. I did write a lot about those, so time to see how much more I can bullshit about them.

Part One on the Aughts: Rome was built not in a day nor two months

Also known as the trio I first played on a 360. As you would see in the listing down there, all 3 here came out before my fifteenth birthday actually, but they were rather close. A 15-year-old and a 14-year-old are just 2 teenagers similar to each other, the year-long gap between them is ignorable. So, what difference do 2 couple of month make anyway? It’s not like one’s 15^tt birthday is some magical threshold like them round numbers. For people nagged at you more at those round numbers while they tend to leave you alone with the fives.

Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater

The original PS2 release of Snake Eater, I dare say, felt dated at launch. The first 2 Splinter Cell were out with their behind-the-back camera along with how Sam Fisher can move and shoot at the same time. People can mix up “move and shoot” with “gun and run”. Moving is just one more to adjust aim, nothing less and nothing more.

Yet Snake Eater’s mixture of spy thriller, historic fiction and sci-fi is why it can still hold people’s attention more than two decades since its PS2 debut. As I finished with Andor season 2 episode 8, the Ghorman Massacre episode, my reaction was “I will remember this as I remembered Operation Snake Eater: with tears in my eyes”. So, enjoy the remake you all, hopefully Konami Digital Entertainment would not foul it up much.

Half-life 2

Funny how Half-life 2 still remains the only “killer app of a digital platform” more than 20 years later. No, there is nothing too special about HL2 other than the game being pretty good. Steam was just one lucky sob with timing, not too early to be immature nor too late to be annoying. It has the better half of a decade to become an establishment before the competitors got wise. Every Tom, Dick, Harry and their non-male counterpart still prefer Steam given the amount of shovelware on it.

Heck, I for one find the er, access Steam provides more continently "plug-and-play" than the shit Microsoft and Sony pulled with Xbox One and PS4. Install after insert the disc? What's this PC wannabe nonsense! And for anyone who thinks that they own a game just because of the discs, think again.

Resident Evil 4

1993’s Doom and 2005’s Resident Evil 4 have a lot in common. Neither was the first in their respective genre. Yet both are so definitive that they might as well be remembered as the first. While RE or Biohazard 4’s stop & pop is not as intuitive as Doom’s gun and run, it still provides players who got used to it a sense of mastery fewer in the genre can offer. Too bad about its inferior sequels.

Part Two on the teens: Not quite kept up with the Jones

Also known as the trio I last played on a Nintendo Switch. My shopping lists for the years 2017 and 2025 look like each other: a light weight laptop for work; a Kindle e-reader because my eyes got sour reading on the phone; and something labeled “Nintendo Switch”. Wait, scratch that last one. While I got my Switch about 2 weeks after its launch, I got no plan for Switch 2 now almost 2 months past since its launch.

On the surface, this looks like an example for Adams to say that people stopped caring for new tech past the age of 35. Reality, as always, is messier. Just look at the “Ultra 64” price tag on the software! Telling Nintendo to just shove it is the nicest possible thing I say. I wasn't paying that much back then, so why do the greedy bastards think I would start now? Guess how early I bought Switch was a reason, but they ain’t get no momentum here.

Dust An Elysian Tail

When this indie gem first came out on Xbox 360, I was in a phase of only buying physical copies, combined that with Tom Mcshea’s laying towards “mixed” review, I did not play this one in 2012. Then, as my habits moved onto Steam, I finally got my hand on it and found it to be the kind playable cartoons I imagined at one much younger age. Fidget got a lot of shit for fitting into her annoying stereotype. But with her speaking lines limited to cut scenes, I found her to be fine.

Suppose there is a certain different vibe brought into this game by its English speaking developer with Korean heritage. With K-pop Demon Hunter being a surprise critical darling and beloved animated thing, you all should give this Korean liking land of high fantasy habited by furry creatures after you watched that closer to comic book than anything Warner and Marvel put out flick.

Fire Emblem Three Houses

I really do not understand why people call Engage a Saturday Morning Cartoon but not Three Houses. Sure, the storyline about states on a land is more serious, but nothing here is grim dark as the thing George R R Martin struggling with. All optional battles, whether it’s random skirmishes to keep units’ level up or “loyal missions”, take place on this world’s equivalent of Saturdays. Besides, what a fresh feeling not seeing any of the final bosses bring another life bar out of their asses.

Persona 5 Royal

I feel like this is just an excuse to talk about the 6 hours spent with Persona 5 Strikers. The writing did bring in that P5 flavor with some surprising character growth. However the muso action and elemental concern just do not gel. The game does not have long tutorial, but the “Get in the trailer, losers” does not appear until 6 hours in. Far too long a tease for something sold on road trip…

Part Three on the twenties: Not with bangers but whimpers.

Also known as the trio still installed on the Steam Deck I own. After trying for more than a decade to care about Nintendo exclusives, I gave up. Sony and Microsoft? Well, in their different ways, I should have told both to fuck off way back in 2013. But I guess my 23-year-old self still considered video game new, exciting and revolutionary while the little shit imagined getting a career in it. By the Game Awards 2023 though, I really started to feel that the industry is a "sea" of games. Games, games everywhere, and not one compels to me to purchase and play, just like "water everywhere, and not a drop to drink" in sea.

It's not exactly 2 years don't not make much difference, more like something going out with a whimper rather than a bang. But there are still nuggets to be found and enjoyed. They are few, farther and reminding me of older times when I had higher tolerance for horseshit.

Hades

So, the game featuring the player character’s father as it final boss came out on my own dad’s 58^th birthday, huh? Oh well, a happy birthday would suffice for the guilt I felt in the game. Not to mention that I did not get to the final boss on that day. Still, thanks to Supergiant for keeping late 1990s’ isometric game alive, I do miss those.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition

In many ways, the first 2 Mass Effect games just soaked up all my affection for the rest of the aughts. Yeah, yeah, Mass Effect 2 came out in 2010, but this was January and before Lunar New Year, so it might as well be of the previous decade. My born-in-January ass went to school sharing grades with people born in the year 1989 after all.

Video game critic wannabes tend to scream at skill tree in games nowadays. While yours truly is one of those video game critic wannabes, my incentive to criticize skill trees had already burnt out and blown up after I laid my eyes on those in Witcher 2 Assassin of Kings. I mean if this Gelrat is so badass, then why do players have to deal with all those RPG bullshit like skill trees and levels? Commander Shepard would never!

Sifu

Back in 2006, my 16 years old self lent a game magazine to a classmate. The lad opened it only too see the coverage of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition and sighed “Why the heck does every expensive polygonal extravaganza these days feel compelled to have monsters?” That question kept haunting me for the next 2 decades. I mean after I heard that Wuchang has “Mimics“, I lost further interest in a game I was not waiting for to begin with.

In between Sifu came out in 2022 and it has only human enemies, which is still so rare. I mean even its developer Sloclap did not make another action game with only human to fight, they made a game about kicking ball.

Afterword: Nature does not have much to do with this.

I believe when Douglas Adams drew his line at the age of 35, it was during a time when 35-year-olds can afford to ignore new tech in their work life. Well, it was not quite the case here in 2025, a time many science fiction novelists like himself did not even dare to envision back in the 20^th century. And what’s this “nature” he referred to anyway. We live in a society, gov , nature has little if not fuck all to do with it!

Yet if one can be too old for some shit, then they must, at some point, had been too young for this shit. Yours truly before the age of 10 could be considered too young for video games, as that little shit got no patience for things pushing back. And I guess a quarter century later, that patience got built up, diminished a bit and caked into something hard to change for the foreseeable future.

I have two Early Access titles installed on my Steam Deck, Hades 2 and Selaco. Both purchased back in May, 2024. The former is of course the bigger better sequel to one of the listed, and as the time of writing was excepted to drop within 2025. (Probably for Halloween with it witching theme).

Selaco is reminder of Monolith (Rip, and may you be revenged by a soon enough shut down of Warner Interactive along with the corporate bastards who decided to close you.) shooters with all its charm and vices. The second episode has not dropped, but man I just love a game letting me save scum like it's 1990s' PC games again.

So you see I prefer new things akin to things came out before I was 10. Things came out before I was born are somewhat closer to ancient history, not that I cannot like it, but there is a distance. I sure as fuck would not embrace them as comforts, god no. Newest trends of this industry now? One got to be nuts to like them all.

So while Adams got the gist of 3 phases right: there are things one is er, born to care about; then there are things one would try very hard to give a shit about; finally there are things one would not bother to give a fuck about. Just that the numbers do vary given the circumstances and just like so many things in the world, it's more progress than thresholds.