Games released on October 25
12 games that still hold up, from Vandal Hearts in 1996 to The Outer Worlds in 2019
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Vandal Hearts 1996
Turned 30 this year PlayStation
In Konami's tactical role playing game for the PlayStation, battles are fought on isometric grids of 3D terrain you can turn, and your whole side moves before the enemy's. If the party leader falls, the battle is lost.
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Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 2000
Turned 26 this year
Picking up after the Allied campaign of the first Red Alert, the Soviets and the Allies go to war again, each with its own units and superweapons such as the Chronosphere and the Iron Curtain. Full motion video frames each campaign.
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Monster Rancher Advance 2 2002
Turned 24 this year Game Boy Advance
Monsters are raised for battle as a sport, and on the Game Boy Advance, which cannot read discs, new ones are made by typing in key phrases or by combining two into one that takes after both.
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Colin McRae Rally 3 2002
Turned 24 this year PlayStation 2, Xbox
Colin McRae takes his Ford Focus through eight rallies of the 2002 World Championship, alone against the clock with a co driver calling each turn, and the damage shows on the car and in how it drives.
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Sid Meier's Civilization IV 2005
Turned 21 this year
Soren Johnson's Civilization takes a people from 4000 BC to one of five victories, among them a spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Its theme, Baba Yetu, was the first video game music to win a Grammy.
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Call of Duty 2 2005
Turned 21 this year Xbox 360
Four soldiers, one Soviet, one American and two British, fight through 27 Second World War missions across three storylines.
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SoulCalibur III 2005
Turned 21 this year PlayStation 2
A weapon fighting game for the PlayStation 2 that lets you make your own fighter, with a class, clothes, armour and a face, and gives them up to five disciplines to fight in.
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Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories 2005
Turned 21 this year PSP
A mobster rises through the Leone family in Liberty City in 1998, in the prequel to Grand Theft Auto III and the first 3D game of the series on a handheld.
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Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift 2007
Turned 19 this year Nintendo DS
Luso Clemens is pulled through a magical book into the world of Ivalice, in the sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
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Battlefield 3 2011
Turned 15 this year PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
A Marine, Henry Blackburn, and a Spetsnaz operative, Dimitri Mayakovsky, share the campaign, while online the battles combine infantry, tanks and fighter jets on maps from Paris and Tehran to Wake Island.
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Batman: Arkham Origins 2013
Turned 13 this year Wii U, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
A Batman game set on Christmas Eve eight years before Arkham Asylum, in which Black Mask puts fifty million dollars on Batman's head and eight assassins come into Gotham.
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The Outer Worlds 2019
Turned 7 this year PlayStation 4, Xbox One
A colonist woken from a long sleep lands in a star system owned by corporations, in a role-playing game where almost any problem can be solved by talking, sneaking or shooting.
