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Curated playlist

Alternate history video games

  • Assassin's CreedAssassin's Creed began as a Prince of Persia sequel with the prince cut out.
  • Metal GearMetal Gear became a stealth game because its computer could not handle a gunfight.
  • BioShockBioShock, a first-person shooter released in 2007, hides its sharpest trick inside a polite request: "Would you kindly." The phrase sounds harmless. In the game it carries a hidden weight, and it changes what the player believes about…
  • Fallout (franchise)In the Fallout franchise, the world ends in a two-hour nuclear exchange on the morning of the 23rd of October 2077, eastern daylight time. Everything in the series grows from the wreckage. Fallout is an American media franchise of…
  • Metal Gear (video game)In the 1987 game Metal Gear, Snake's own commander tells the player to switch off the console.
  • BioShock InfiniteBioShock Infinite sends its hero to a city that floats among the clouds above America in 1912. Irrational Games developed it and 2K published it in 2013, and it is a first-person shooter that leans hard on story. The hero is Booker DeWitt,…
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the PatriotsMetal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots reached shops on the 12th of June 2008. According to Konami, more than three million units shipped worldwide that day. Kojima Productions built the game for the PlayStation 3, and it was the sixth…
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 reached stores on the 10th of November 2009, and within 24 hours it had sold roughly 4.7 million copies in the United States and the United Kingdom. Those sales brought in $310 million. At the time, that made…
  • Silent Hill: Shattered MemoriesThe 2009 horror game Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has no combat at all. Harry can only run, hide and use flares.
  • Call of Duty: Black OpsCall of Duty: Black Ops sold more than 5.6 million copies within 24 hours of going on sale in November 2010. That total beat the record set by Modern Warfare 2 by roughly 2.3 million copies. Treyarch built the game and Activision published…
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops IICall of Duty: Black Ops II took in more than $500 million in the first 24 hours after it went on sale. That figure made the 2012 first-person shooter the largest entertainment launch of all time. The record stood until Grand Theft Auto V…
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake EaterMetal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater sends the player up an extremely tall ladder for roughly three minutes, with a vocal theme song as the only company. Fans and critics singled out the climb as one of the series' most memorable moments. Some…
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom PainMetal Gear Solid V was first announced as an indie game from a fake Swedish studio. Kojima's team made it.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of LibertyEvery trailer for Metal Gear Solid 2 showed Solid Snake in fights that Raiden had. Players had never heard of him.
  • For HonorIn the sword-fighting game For Honor, you block duels by guarding left, right, or top.
  • Metal Gear 2: Solid SnakeIn Metal Gear 2, a cornered Solid Snake turns a lighter and an aerosol can into a flamethrower.
  • The Outer WorldsThe Outer Worlds is a 2019 action role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, and it begins with a history that never happened. In the game's timeline, U.S. President William McKinley was never assassinated in 1901. Theodore Roosevelt…
  • Cyberpunk 2077Cyberpunk 2077 broke a record within hours of its midnight GMT launch on the 10th of December 2020. More than one million people played it at once on Steam, and one million viewers watched live on Twitch. Together, the figures doubled the…
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold WarCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, released in 2020, carried a production budget of more than 700 million US dollars. That is an enormous sum for a game that started out as something else entirely. It was not supposed to belong to the Black…
  • Starfield (video game)Starfield is a 2023 action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, and it lets the player land on more than 1,000 planets. That scale raises a few questions. Why did a studio tied to Skyrim and Fallout 4 turn its attention to space?…

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