30 Best Video Games Of All Time

20. Bioshock

The game that changed the very nature of storytelling in video games. Before Bioshock, we'd never asked "Why" - why am I obeying the random quest-giver in this RPG? Why am I killing X number of faceless goons on the opposite side of the level? Why does Sonic collect rings? It could go on and on.

Bioshock posits this notion of choice by slowly playing its hand and unfurling one of the best twists in video game history.

Uniquely, it's the sort of thing that could never work effectively on screen, requiring literal player agency in events from the very beginning of the game, to then loop back around and invert everything you thought you knew.

I'm staying deliberately vague in case you've never experienced Bioshock yourself, but sufficed to say, what Ken Levine and his team at Irrational managed to pull off would forever alter the landscape of storytelling in video games, introducing a level of critique essential to analysing the artform overall.