Top 5 Places Human's Have Visited In Space... In Videogames.

I'm fascinated by space. It's beauty and mystery captivate me and yet it's a place that by and large, we live within completely unaware of. Our own little worlds are our main concern, we wouldn't know if a meteor flew by Earth, narrowly missing a fatal impact or if a Gamma Ray Burst was heading towards us. Stars are exploding all around us, hundreds of light years away and yet if you take the occasional glance at the sky at night, all we can see is the twinkling of stars.
Recently I was gifted a telescope and I've since learned that several of those nighttime "stars" are actually our neighbors. Mercury, Venus and Jupiter all easily spotted in my Telescope. If you didn't know they were there before you certainly will once you clasp eyes on Venus, the brightest of the Planets in the sky.
But I digress, space is so out of reach for us at the moment. As a species and especially as individuals, but in the world of science fiction we've been able to explore the cosmos at our leisure and I'm going to rundown my top five locations Humans have visited in videogames.

Foreword, I wanted to keep this list somewhat grounded in reality and so I will only be listing locations that Human's from Earth have visited. So sorry Star Wars and your Galaxy from far, far away. Also, no fantasy worlds either as there is no information that such a world has links to Humans from Earth.
So, without further ado, let's get into it:

EUROPA - CALL OF DUTY INFINITE WARFARE

We're going to start close to home, Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar systems. It's often regarded as Earth's protector; it's large gravitational pull drags debris such as meteors into itself, though this may be an undeserving title as Jupiter is more than capable of knocking other objects off their orbital paths and directly into Earth!

But Jupiter is a beautiful planet, it's surface hidden beneath a sea of copper and cream clouds, swirling endlessly and how could we forget it's infamous Red Spot, a storm that has been ongoing for hundreds of years!

Jupiter has many Moons in it's orbit, most are rather small but five are often cited. One of it's most interesting Moons is Europa, an icy ball that has a liquid water core. Europa is often noted as the most likely place to find extraterrestial life in our Solar System. But we're talking micro-organisms not E.T. sadly.
In Call of Duty Infinite Warfare, events begin on Europa; a weapons black site attacked by the SDF. UNSC special forces land on Europa and attempt to secure the site. It's a breath taking opener of a mission. Descending through the icy ammonia clouds of Europa, the soldiers crash against it's icy mantle and there looming in the distance is the ominous Jupiter, occupying almost the entire sky. 

There's a wealth of inaccuracies in Infinite Warfare regarding what it'd be like to go to Europa, not mentioning the obscene amount of radiation you'd be basking in, so close to Jupiter but it's certainly a gorgeous and satisfying entry.

THE SPHERE - PREY (2006)

It's been a long time since I played this old gem, sadly it's almost unmentioned thanks to the successful reboot of the franchise. The original game was a thoroughly enjoyable adventure about a Cherokee man named Tommy who one night, along with his girlfriend Jen and Uncle is beamed up to an alien spacecraft called The Sphere, a biological spaceship that harvests planet's life forms. I won't go in to too many details, save the spoilers and all that but needless to say, Prey had some interesting narrative arcs.

The spaceship itself was roughly the size of a moon, but is a hollow structure that's more like a network of parts assembled together. It processes organic life into ship parts, sustaining itself for future intergalactic harvesting. 
One of the most interesting aspects of the ship is the portals employed to connect different parts of the ship together. This was one of the first games to show working ingame Portals and employed them to great effect.

If you haven't played Prey from 2006, I seriously suggest you hunt down a copy and play it. It was an absolute gem when it came out way back when and is still worth your time today.

MARS - DOOM (2016)

Not to sound arrogant or ignorant, but Mars is the planet I am the least interested in. It's a barren rock with virtually no atmosphere. Aside from having the largest mountain in the solar system (the Olympus Mons) it has no other notable features. Sure there are plans to have Humans begin colonisation in as early as 2060 but really, there's not a lot there that captivates my interest.

Then comes Doom 2016, it has had the most interesting iteration of Mars to date. (Lets be honest, the original Doom 1 is a fun game but it could've been based anywhere). Doom 3 let players explore a fair bit of the martian landscape and the hidden alien catacombs deep within but the Doom reboot makes it for me. 
Firstly, the Mars base is now fully realised and is a massive, mega-structure that reaches all over the red planet, right up to it's icy poles. I loved how the AI processor needed to be cooled so much that it had to be installed at one of Mar's pole. For the first time someone shows us Mars in more than one colour. 

COLLECTOR BASE, GALACTIC CENTRE - MASS EFFECT 2

I did "um" and "ah" as to whether include a Mass Effect planet in this list as to be honest, most of the planets that it introduces aren't especially exciting. Much like Star Wars, the series that inspired it, Mass Effects planets have that 'I'm one type of terrain/environment' all over sort of style. No place is varied and each planet is a derivitave of some Earth like environment. Mass Effect 2 however, had some balls. Throughout the game Shepherd and his crew are investigating the disappearance of humans from colonies all over the galaxy and his search ends when he discovers the location of the Collector Ship, a brain washed species that has been rounding up Humans for a nefarious intergalactic plot I won't divulge here.

The most exciting part about this is the location of the Collector base, the Galatic Centre! We are completely unable to view into the galactic centre. It's a dense region of the Galaxy where super massive stars reside, their huge mass has made them sink to the centre where a super massive black hole lurks, Sagitarius A*. 
Life must be pretty impossible here, the largest stars have incredibly short life spans, burning through their hydrogen reserves with shocking speed and then exploding into super novas, releasing gases and particles the star fused in it's short time. These gases, with so much collective mass collapse in on themselves and ignite into more stars. All the while, Sagitarius A* is ripping apart stars that get too close to it's core and releases huge jets of Gamma radiation, powerful enough to destroy life millions of light years away...

With all that in mind, why would you make your base of operations here? It would be unlivable, the constant super novas, the ridiculous amounts of radiation and the sheer gravitational forces exerted on space time here alone would make this a deadly place.
In Mass Effect 2, the Galactic centre is cloudy looking place, and does actually seem further from the centre than what one would think but needless to say, going anywhere near the galactic centre is an exciting proposition and whilst I would have liked to have seen a more interesting take on what things would be like so close to all this star and black hole activity, I applaud Bioware's enthusiasm for showing us a place we will never, ever see.

THE SPRAWL, THE MOON TITAN - DEAD SPACE 2

Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons. It is also the only other locale in our solar system that has an atmosphere rich in nitrogen, in fact Titan has a weather system that works very similar to Earth. Titan has regions like Earth also, however, instead of having oceans of water, Titan has oceans of liquid methane that have carved it's rocky structure just as Earth's oceans have done to our own blue little planet.

Interestingly, in the Dead Space lore; Titan was the first place to be "planet cracked" and by the events of Dead Space 2 all that is left of Titan is a final shard, the moon almost wiped out from the existence of space. An amazing and chilling thought, planets and moons refined into nothingness. 

Much of Dead Space 2 takes place on The Sprawl, the colony come refinement chewing up the last of the moon. However, this is all just a front for the Earth Government who've been recreating Markers by mapping Isaac Clarke's brain. Sadly, the facility has been intercepted by the insidious Unitologists that attack the colony, commit mass murders and suicides and all for the aim of feeding the Necromorphs with fresh corpses. 

In the end Isaac Clarke destroys the last remnants of Titan along with the Sprawl and all the Necromorphs on it. All for the best really as all those corpses were being fused into a brethren moon! 

DISHONORABLE MENTION: VENUS - WOLFENSTEIN THE NEW COLOSSUS 

In Wolfenstein The New Colossus, about 80% into the game you're sent on a mission to get some codes for a Nazi airship. The codes are located at a central base on the planet Venus... Freaking Venus.

If you're not too up on your astronomy, let me give you a couple of points of info about Venus: it is the hottest planet in the solar system with a temperature of at least 462 degrees Celsius and that temperature doesn't particularly change from day to night because it's atmosphere is so dense from a runaway greenhouse effect that it acts like a blanket, trapping all the heat it absorbs from the Sun. 

Oh, and this thick atmosphere by the way, it's incredibly dense; about 90 BAR or 1305 Pounds Per Square Inch. You gloss the internet and you'll learn that a measly 100 PSI of pressure is more than able to force air through your skin and into your bloodstream with lethal implications. Imagine trying to build anything in that? The stress to any machine or even human it would be impossible to build any infrastructure.
Lastly, the clouds are made up of sulfuric acid and it even rains acid on a regular basis so why in The New Colossus do I see vulcanised tyres being stored outside the Nazi base? Hmm.

I'm sorry Wolfenstein, you're a fun game with some great story telling but you are taking some huge liberties when it comes to your depiction of Venus. Naughty Wolfenstein!

CONCLUSION

Space is a fantastic place that holds so many secrets and wonders and I'll probably not live long enough to see them. Thankfully I live in an age of cinema and videogames and can vicariously voyage through space, exploring planets and galaxies and that's great.

We're rather short sighted, all this majesty floating above us in all directions, until I started looking into space and astronomy six months ago, I couldn't remember the last time I looked at the sky in wonder. I took it all for granted, we all do. But one day when the last star dies and all that is left is blackholes slowly radiating away, there will be no wonders. Just an emptiness, never to be filled again.