Here is a top five list of singular visions in videogaming. Each of these games had a creator behind them that pushed a singular vision that defied genres and focus testing and ended with something specifically unique. Each of these games also had to be commercial enough to be released by a major publisher on and be available to a wide audience.

5. Psyconauts

Tim Schafer, who created Monkey Island and Grim Fandango was the driving force behind this unique platformer. It’s the story of a psychic summer camp, and focuses as much on telling a story as it does on tough jumps (more so in fact). Each level is an intricately designed slice of another character’s mind and the game never stops being inventive and creative. The only thing stopping this from being higher on the list is the sneaking suspiction that Scahfer added the platforming elements to make the game more popular (even if he did so as the platforming genre was in decline).

4. Indigo Prophecy/Omicron

Omicron: The Nomad Soul, was a videogame released in 1999 by Quantic Dream. It was an adventure game set in an alien open world before open world games existed. It starts by having a character from this alien world come through you Dreamcast/Windows 9X machine and grab you into the gameworld. Then David Bowie came and helped you lead the city’s rebels to victory. Seriously.

Indigo Prophecy, which came out at the tail end of 2005 was Quantic Dreams follow up to Omicron. While not quite as ambitious or cracktastic as The Nomad Soul, it was probably the closest any game has ever come to actually being an interactive movie. While you actually had little control over the course of the story, the game did an excellent job of making you feel as if you were inside the lives of the characters, bringing a level of immersion only available in an interactive medium. The fact that the ending was pretty damn stupid is an unfortunate side effect of the fact that there were pressures on the production and they needed to get the game out for Christmas 2005.

3. Shadow of the Colossus/Ico

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are games directed by Fumito Ueda and developed internally at Sony. Each offers an amazing take on a well thought out world, both at once dreamlike and anally realistic. The key to this is that the environments feel lived in, without showing life. They are places abandoned by society, and the games highlight the absence.

2. Braid

Braid almost doesn’t count because it’s almost an indie game, but it was released on the Xbox 360 to a wide audience so it sneaks it. Also, its pretty much the definition of a singular vision in that it takes a key concept and develops it to its logical end with little compromise. Braid is essentially a platformer that takes an element that always ran linearly in platformers before, time, and allows it to be effected by the player and the environment, creating a new experience.

1. Metal Gear Solid (Series)

Snake! SNAAAAAAAAKE! Love it or hate it, no popular series is helmed by a man who puts exactly what he wants into his games more than Metal Gear Solid. It takes balls to follow up one of the most popular and acclaimed games of the PS1 with what is, essentially, a post-modern mind-fuck (MGS2). Further to that there is an obsession with spending resources on things that other creators would find trivial. For example in MGS4 there is a crowd scene that lasts all of 20 seconds. It’s populated with a crowd of civilians who act completely differently to the enemies you fight in the game, and it’s the only time they show up. So a totally separate AI interaction set had to be made for that one scene. The whole series is filled with stuff like that. More famously there was the fight with the sniper The End in MGS3. In most games creators would have been scared away from having a one to two hour sequence where the character is fighting a lone enemy in the jungle, but in here it was a shining centerpiece of the game.