Gamers: Which are your most favourite video games?

Oh, some of my favourites:

Mass Effect series.
Dragon Age series.
Halo series.
Saint’s Row
GTA San Andreas
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (I liked number one better).
World of Warcraft.
Call of Duty series.

That’s all I can think of at the moment.

Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic
Mass Effect 2
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Ultimate Mortal Kombat:3
Halo1 and Halo 3
Civilization Revolution

The Bioshock series
The Silent Hill series (particularly 2 and 3)
Resident Evil 4
The Timesplitters series (TimeSplitters Future Perfect is my favorite game of all time)
The Pokemon series
Portal
The Half Life series
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (Tied for first with Future Perfect)
Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas
Alan Wake
Sim City 4

Battlefield 2
Super Mariokart
F-Zero
Wipeout 2097
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Legend of Zelda series

Ooo yes, good answers so far. I forgot about Bioshock, Battlefield, Edler Scrolls, Half Life and Fallout. Good games. Oh, another one I really like are the Assassin’s Creed series.

I think I’ve only played two of the Silent Hill ones – pretty freaky but good. @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I am in the middle of Alan Awake.

@PluckyDog the soundtrack was my favorite part of the game.

Plants vs Zombies
Mario Cart 64
Bejewled 3
Excitebike

Silent Hill
Tekken
Mario
Call of Duty
Soul Caliber
God of War
The Sims

Those are probably my all-time favorites.

Transport Tycoon Deluxe
Worms
Red Alert 2
Lord Of The Rings Online
Sim City 4

There are a lot of game I like .. mostly I enjoy mmo’s where I can interact with a lot of people [ though I enjoy single player games for some stories ]

Gothic series
Ultima series
Might and Magic series
Heroes series
etc

But I can definitely say that ” Lineage 2 ” is my favourite. I play it for over 5 years and I cannot get enough.

The games I still go back to time and again are
System Shock 2
Deus Ex
Half Life series.

Bioshock series
Assassins Creed series
Fallout series
Elder Scrolls series
Alan Wake
The Sims series
Fifa series
Valve games in general
Bioware games in general
Not to mention, of course, E.T the game

Gears of War….3 comes out in September, yay!
Call of Duty
GTA
Halo
God of War
Red Dead
Borderlands
Assassins Creed
Gran Turismo

Fallout series (all of ‘em)
Elder Scroll series (starting with Daggerfall and only skipping a couple)
Civilization series
Alternate Reality series
Arcanum
Grim Fandango

World Of Warcraft (semi-hardcore raider when I’m subscribed, rogue!)

Civilization series (used to play Civ2 when I was aged 7. The game was made for students and young adults…)

Terraria (cutest sandbox game, and very lightweight!)

Football Manager 2011 (I love my football)

Age of Empires series (classic and educational to the history noobs)

Portal 2 (game of 2011? best voice-acting of all time)

Romance Of The Three Kingdoms XI (strategy and historical version of Dynasty)

Dynasty Warriors series (hack and slash with an awesome real-life story and diverse characters)

As a child I grew up on a lot of Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Gran Turismo, Fifa, Tekken, Sonic, Timesplitters and Civ.

@mrentropy a couple is usually classed as two, if you started at Daggerfall (Elder Scrolls II) and skipped two you have therefore only played Daggerfall as there are only four in the series.

@paul I think he meant skipping the first and playing Daggerfall and another one in the series, at least that’s my interpretation :)

@trickface, that makes sense I suppose, it just isn’t phrased very well

@poisonedantidote RA2 is such an underrated RTS game.
My favorites:
Counter-Strike:Source
Portal 1 and 2
Team Fortress 2
Dead Space (haven’t played the second one)
Bad Company 2
Goldeneye 007
Banjo and Kazooie
L4D
and The Simpsons and House of Dead arcade games

G-rated ones like Harry Potter and Nancy Drew. Also, the ones with hidden objects and mental puzzles, as well as a decent story line.

I don’t play them anymore.
But I saw my son playing one that sort of hit home personally, and I thought about trying it out.
It is a scenario called O Cristo Redentor in the game called Modern Warfare 2
Looked familiar. And really scary.

Tomb Raider: Legend
Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
The Sims 2
Stuntman: Ignition

and Pokemon

@Paul Sort of. The games I missed out on would be Arena, Battlespire, and Redguard. While the last two aren’t numbered they do have ‘Elder Scrolls’ stuck on the front of them, so I really missed three. Not a couple.

On the other hand, I only missed one of the numbered ES games so that’s all right.

Jet Set Radio (Dreamcast)
World of Warcraft (PC)
Tekken 3 (PS1)
Soul Calibur (Dreamcast)
Final Fantasy Series (my favorites are Tactics for the PS1, then 6j)
Einhander (PS1)
Pitfall (Atari 2600)
Captain Skyhawk (NES)
Metroid (NES)
Mario 64 (N64)
Starcraft (PC)
Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)
Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past (SNES)
Unreal Tournament (PC)
Tutankham (Atari 2600)
NHL ‘94 (Genesis)
Legend of Kane (NES)
Bubble Bobble (NES)
Plants Vs. Zombies (PC)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1)

Split in nostalgia favourites and modern favourites in no particular order (with a small list of reasons):

Nostalgia:

Baldur’s Gate II Soa and ToB (Best RPG dialogues of yet, wonderful team bantering, deep and complex storyline)

The Longest Journey (My first actual graphic adventure, wonderful story, its aesthetics still figure prominently in my design ideas)

Jedi Academy (Spectacular fighting system for its time, first actual MP experience)

Street Fighter II Turbo (First fighter game experience, state of the art game for the time, HADOKEN)

Vampire: Bloodlines (Very immersive and fun, though it could have been so much more)

Black & White (Wonderfully designed and incredibly deep game, still one of the best videogames ever, one of the few games i would buy again if they made an HD remake without changing the gameplay)

Max Payne (Still probably one fo the best shooters of all times, masterful plotline and great execution all around)

Modern:

Bulletstorm (Fun, apeshit, brilliant game, though tainted by out-of-place modern mechanics)

Mass Effect 1 & 2 (Great RPGs, great gameplay)

Persona 3 and 4 (again, great RPGs, despite the shitty standard JRPG gameplay)

Guilty Gear and BlazBlue (Best fighters on the market)

The Witcher 1 (Masterful debut title, based on great source material, very european sensibilities, spectacular all around except for the extremely sub-par animations, probably due to the lack of specialists in the studio)

The Witcher 2 (Same as the previous but with spectacular animations)

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (Best RPG on the NDS, deep and complex storilyne plus it’s Shin Megami Tensei)

Alpha Protocol (Not very well coded but innovative approach at RPG dialogue and plot development, pity about the shitty stealth, which is kind of a big downside considering it’s a game about spies)

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (Best Spider-Man game on the market, pity about the badly thought out multiple endings)

Soul Calibur III (Very intuitive gameplay, sooooo many evenings spent twatting eachother with blunt swords while drinking heavily and laughing like morons)

Dead Rising 2 (Funny, free and original, though bugged up the arse)

Left for Dead 1 & 2 (Best if played with friends, though)

I haven’t played for years but I used to like…

1 Chaos Engine
2 Legend of Zelda
3 Goldeneye
4 Doom

My favourite series, Castlevania, Shadow Hearts, Silent Hill and Final Fantasy, from one to nine.

Favorite of all time would have to be Donkey Kong Country 2

Wow, lots of games on here I’ve actually never even heard of. And, lots of good oldies. Many I haven’t tried yet as well. I need to get into renting games. Then I can try a lot more ..lol.

Ooo @Thammuz I loved Max Payne.

Anyone tried the new Duke Nukem yet?

@PluckyDog hated it, your thoughts?

@Paul I haven’t tried it yet. What did you hate about it?

@PluckyDog There’s a new Max Payne coming out. I’m playing through Duke Nukem Forever now.

@PluckyDog Terrible game play, horrid jokes, vulgar everything. Boring overall, play the demo (it’s the only good bit of the game!).

Portal (I want Portal 2)

Gran Turismo series

Metal Gear Solid 3 (fun replay)

Disgaea 2 (even more replay value; very deep game if you want all the goodies)

Mercenaries 2:World in Flames

Postal 2 (I need to get 3 when it comes out)

Various tower defense games on my Droid X

@jerv get Portal 2 already, you’re depriving yourself!

Oh I like this question! :D
Bioshock 1 and 2
Resident Evil 5
Pokemon
Halo
Assassin’s Creed 1, 2 and Brotherhood
Left 4 Dead 1 and 2
Half Life 2
Alan Wake

@trickface I like having gas to get to work, food on the table, and an apartment to put that table in, so it might be a little while longer :(

@Duke Nukem Forever

I like to think that I’m a pretty reasonable and open minded person. I’m really not sure about a game where they very first thing you do is smear shit all over the bathroom though. Even I think that’s bad. Me!!

Bayonetta. She has a nice ass. And shoots weapons from her legs.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R, the Bioshock games, World of Goo, Plants vs. Zombies, all of the Sims games,

and holy fuck. I love Starcraft.

@Symbeline I’ve heard the reviews on DNF and they aren’t great, mostly due to the too-linear gameplay as opposed to the more freeform games like the ones I play.
Also, I would recommend that you stay away from Postal 2 or 3. Stunning a cop, knocking his head off with a shovel, pissing on the corpse, and then kicking the head down the street all while wearing a gimp suit are not things you can do in most games, nor is using a cat as a silencer for a shotgun.
OTOH, Postal 2 does so in a satirical manner; they are intentionally over-the-top whiel DNF is just plain crude for the sake of crudeness.

@jerv Yeah, the poop smearing is nothing compared to how bad the game is to play. They made the gameplay too much like the old ones. I mean it’s been what, 13 years? It’s Duke Nukem yeah, but they could have evolved him a little.

Instead, poop smearing and linear gameplay. w00tz
I love older games though, but I can understand that perhaps the legions of DNF fans may have been waiting for something a little more…evolved. Think what DNF could have been with today’s ideas and concepts and games. Instead they just kept the old shit, and turned him into an imbecile.

I like crudeness. I love it. But it has to have a point, have a meaning somehow. What you describe about Postal 2 doesn’t offend or disgust me. Nor does DNF, for that matter, but I just think a lot of the content is stupid. Well, from the little I’ve seen.

Thanks for the answers so far everyone. I’ll be checking some of them out. :)

I said Alan Awake earlier ..lol I feel dumb. It is Alan Wake (blush). I don’t know why ..everytime I say it in my head, it’s “awake” instead of “wake”.

@PluckyDog that’s kind of the joke. Alan Wake’s initials are A. Wake, which plays into the dreaming theme of the game.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I know ..but because of that, I always think of the game as being called Alan Awake even though I know it’s Alan Wake. I was just surprised that I went so far as to type out the wrong title ..lol.

Have fun playing the old ones first ^^

Regarding DNF: I think you can sum it up by quoting this particular event in the game: There is a sequence where a soldier tells Duke “your green powerarmor is right here” pointing to a master chief suit, to which Duke replies “Powerarmor is for pussies”. This would be very very funny, if it weren’t for the fact that duke can only carry two weapons at a time and has regenerating health.

Not to mention the fact that his health bar is labelled “ego” and yet it refills by acting like a massive pussy and cowering behind cover while waiting for your health to regenerate.

It’s an average FPS, severely schizophrenic in tone, and it doesn’t realise that poking fun at current gen FPS clichés doesn’t work if you’re doing the exact same thing.

Regarding Max Payne 3: Does this look like Max Payne to anyone here? The brand has been bought by Rockstar, a few years back, so i wouldn’t hold my breath for another good sequel like MP2

There are more games I like, and all of them are old-school games that have yet to be matched.

The original Deus Ex rocks, and Bioshock 2 isn’t bad either.

You can keep your Starcraft because I have Warzone 2100 which was great when you had to buy it and is now even better because it’s free. I have a thing for customizable units.

Speaking of now-free games that rock, there is also Mechwarrior 4 for those that like big robots, though it can’t really be played at high resolution. It was originally written almost a decade ago, and turning the resolution u[ much past 800×600 makes it too jittery to aim accurately. Yeah, it’s different from MW2, but I feel the gameplay is better in many ways and it should hold me over until Mechwarrior (the reboot) comes out.

I also groove to some of the Midway Arcade Treasures; Gauntlet, Smash TV, Total Carnage, and Vindicators.

Most of the new games don’t really hold much appeal for me as they focus more on graphics than on gameplay :p

@jerv Most of the new games don’t really hold much appeal for me as they focus more on graphics than on gameplay :p

That is so balls out wrong it’s not even funny.

Don’t assume that because games have good graphics they lack gameplay. And don’t think that because they don’t look impressive today, older graphics weren’t expensive in their own right, both in terms of time and of cost.

King of fighters always had the best graphics of its time, and it also had incredibly good gameplay. Many PS2 titles had impressively good graphics that came with state of the art gameplay, and it is no different today.

Just because good graphics draw a crowd, that doesn’t mean studios are skimping out on the rest of the content.

@Thammuz I’m not saying that good games can’t have good graphics, merely that I haven’t seen many well-designed games lately. There are a few that I feel match the originality and immersiveness of the older stuff, but they seem to be in the minority.

@jerv Which is bollocks, because “the originality and immersiveness of the older stuff” is in your head and nowhere else. See here for a good explanation with examples.

To sum up the video: For every good game of old, there were at least 10 others that were absolute shit, cash-ins and rip-offs. Just like now.

The difference is that now we have wider access to them and we have the internet that allows us to actually see beyond what our favourite videogame store of old had for sale, we can see the vastness of the market for what it really is: a sea of bland mediocrity with some glittery boat sailing above it. If you don’t believe that there were lots of shitty games in the past generations, just take a look at the Angry Videogame Nerd’s videos, or Spoony’s videos.

And, as a side note, gameplay isn’t everything. One of my favourite games of all times has the shittiest gameplay you could ever find, the standard JRPG bollocks where you basically have a distinct disconnect between exploration and fighting, and yet it’s incredibly immersive and manages to make you feel exactly like the protagonist feels: “Would I rather go killing monsters in a dungeon, risk my life and get very tired, or go out with my firends? Fuck the dungeon, let’s see who’s not doing any homework today.” The game is Persona 4, and it’s probably one of the best gaming experiences of my life, despite its flaws.

I think the thing here is that gameplay has changed a lot since my TurboGrafix 16 days. Games aren’t quite the same, and are using new concepts and ideas for people to mess with. Indeed, online features being a big thing. But that doesn’t make today’s types of gameplay any less than what we had before. (scale wise from the then and the now) Shit be changing. I just like most of the older stuff better, and can’t quite get into much modern gaming, because the gap is so huge from what I loved video games to begin with. But I must stress, I’m sure modern games are awesome for what they’re wanting to be.

Except Duke Nukem Forever. XD

And yeah, James Rolfe rocks lol.

@Symbeline Except Duke Nukem Forever.

No arguing there.

Still, take a look at the video, if you haven’t already. It’s well thought out and interesting.

@Thammuz The second post sums things up early on” “Well I think some arguments are a matter of personal taste as well.”

There have always been a lot of shitty games; I won’t deny that. It’s just that with so many more games, the crap ratio does seem to be rising as there are more games out there just trying to cash in on what is hot at the moment, ride a license/franchise into the ground, or make an inferior clone of something else that does without any appreciable rate of increase in real gems. Those few modern games that shine really do blow the best of the past away though.

As to your side note, the gameplay in Disgaea 2 isn’t great and the graphics are about on par with SNES, yet it is still immersive in a Tetris-like way. I think that that sort of thing is par for the course when it comes to Atlus who also published the original Disgaea.

@jerv It’s just that with so many more games, the crap ratio does seem to be rising as there are more games out there just trying to cash in on what is hot at the moment, ride a license/franchise into the ground, or make an inferior clone of something else that does without any appreciable rate of increase in real gems.

Absolutely. Personally I think the ratio has remained sorta the same, with console specific differences (The PSP library mostly sucks balls, for instance), then again i sample a huge quantity of games, being the proud owner of a PS2 (hacked), PSP(hacked), NDS (R4), PC and Xbox 360 (hacked) (the consoles i own that i still use).

I think that that sort of thing is par for the course when it comes to Atlus
Good to see somebody else likes Atlus. I’m constantly amazed that games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest sell so well when they’re clearly inferior to the SMT series…

If you have a way to do it, check out Catherine, when it comes out. It’s the latest effort of the Persona team, and Atlus’ first HD game, and from the trailers it looks Fucking. Awesome.

@Thammuz I don’t even own a PS3 or Xbox 360, but I’m still thinking about buying Catherine and using one of my friend’s systems to play it.

As for the quantity of sucky games now vs. past, I personally think there are more terrible games now than ever, but that is mainly because the market is saturated with FPS’s and I loathe FPS type games for the most part.

@amujinx There’s plenty of good non FPS games (i don’t like them either, as you can see from my list, which has only one, piss easy FPS), you just have to know where to look.

Also, kudos on the Catherine thing, i personally fear the fact that XBOX games can still be region locked, which means i could get fucked over, since my XBOX is Pal, and need to buy a PS3. Which i wouldn’t buy because, seriously, fuck the PS3, the games are too heavy to download and it loads so fucking slow it’s not even funny.

@Thammuz I know there are plenty of good games around still, my point is more that the ratio of good games to bad games (ignoring the FPS genre at the moment) is about the same as it ever was, but when you add in how many FPS’s are around now, it skews the numbers (for me) to having more bad games out than ever before. It’s also harder for me to find a good game since I prefer going by word of mouth than video game critics, and when all the people I know are playing FPS’s it makes it more difficult to find good games. I’ll be happy when the FPS craze is over and people will flock to better genre (which is almost anything in my opinion).

@amujinx IMO, you should find a critic with which you find you mostly agree and go with that as a rule of thumb. Also, play lots of demos, Steam is particularly good for that and it also offers lots of very good indie games that generally don’t succumb to the blandness of mainstream games (being lower budget and thus risking less). I personally go with Yahtzee Croshaw, Spoony and Angry Joe, if 2 out of three like it, it usually ends up in my collection pretty quickly.

Much love for Yahtzee, I am now an escapist gold member after stumbling across Zero Punctuation xD @Thammuz

@Paul Same here, made my account during desert bus so half the money went to the charity.

Super Mario RPG, best game ever.

Besides that any free-roaming RPG like Fallout or Elder Scrolls.

In regards to free computer RPG games, I find the ones I’ve tried are way too laggy for me. I usually have a difficult time with the character movement as well. Maybe because I’m only accustomed to WoW though, on pc’s.

@PluckyDog ohgod.jpg

Stay the fuck away from MMOs. Seriously.

That goes for the gaming itself not to mmos.

In any case it’s true that games do not challenge one that much but still some like them and like to spend time playing them.

@Thammuz Yes, I learnt all about B.F. Skinner in college. I’m aware of the Skinner Box game structures. The video you linked was cute and well done. I tend to go through phases of gaming. I’ll play a lot of Xbox for a month. Then a long break. Then I’ll be back into WoW for a month (that game is getting old though – I’ve played a lot less in the last couple years). Then nothing again. Depends on my life at the time I guess.

@Hibernate MMOs are pretty much only that, as far as gameplay is concerned.

@PluckyDog Personally, i played WoW for a 15 days trial period, then i decided that paying for something that boring was on par for paying for a job.

@Hibernate Some games are pretty challenging, though the only challenges in MMOs seems to be trying to compete worth no-life people who wear diapers and drink massive quantities of caffeine so they can game for 74 straight hours. Not much fun, and most of why I prefer single-player or LAN games against people who I know have a life outside of gaming.

@jerv I follow my variant of Yahtzee’s rule on multiplayer: never play with someone you can’t have a chance to punch in the face within the next week.

@Thammuz Hence my preference for tabletop RPG and tabletop games. That, and the free junk food.

@jerv I agree about the “no-life people” being the greatest challenge in those games – and the greatest annoyance. I think that is a big reason why I’m finding WoW getting old and boring more times than not. It’s the same stuff and type of players ..over and over. I’m not into raiding or arenas ..I’m more into questing. That can get repetitive as well – especially if you’ve been playing for a few years.

@PluckyDog That can get repetitive as well – especially if you’ve been playing for a few years.

Or days, even hours, if you’ve ever played a decent RPG and expect something more for your effort than a shitty item/gold reward, some EXP and a pat on the back.

It’s one of the things i love about The Witcher: it has both kinds of quest and can justify both: Getalt is a monster hunter for hire, so he can pick up monster killing contracts and, indeed, there’s not faster way to pick up quick cash, but there’s far more interesting quests both plot related and secondary. The monster contracts are usually something you pick up after you’ve already killed the monsters in question and gathered a decent quantity of spoils, so you can pick the contract up and go cash it in almost immediately, assuming it doesn’t turn out you need one or two items more.

@Thammuz And that is why Fable: The Lost Chapter ranks pretty high on my personal list, as does Mercenaries 2 to a lesser extent.

@jerv The Lost Chapters is the only decent game in the fable series… I played all of them and it’s getting worse and worse…

Just like Final Fantasy jumped the shark, eh?

I was just forgeting how atrocious that game was, thanks @jerv.

@jerv Never been a fan of final fantasy, TBH. I played number 8 as a kid, and i liked it because i didn’t know any better, but going back to it after a few years i found i couldn’t stand it, nostalgia goggles aside. It has an interesting gameplay idea (The junctioning system) that would work perfectly for a game with an entirely different context, in its own context only serves to rise the question of a) why the fuck do i bother picking a character when after junctioning they’re all pretty much the same? and b) Why does magic have ammo while guns do not? But for what i saw, it’s been a downward spiral ever since that.

They probably should just can the series and start from scratch, people are going to buy it anyway, because a) it’s square enix and b) final fantasy never had direct sequeling as a rule (except for X-2 and XIII-2) so the only difference would be that by shedding the whole baggage they could try something new.

@Thammuz Many agree with me that FF7 was the best, and mostly for reasons other than the mechanics.

@jerv Never played it, heard many times that i am missing a good game, but i know the plot and it’s really not my cup of tea. Plus, I dislike Cloud, much like i dislike Squall, and i see little point in RPing someone i would smack with a dead trout if i had the chance IRL.

OH MAN! So many to choose from!
Pac-Man (My very first gaming experience :)
Joust
Pitfall (Still hate the Gaters)
Fatal Frame (1)
Splinter Cell (all)
Metal Gear Solid (all except “Snake Eater”)
Elder Scrolls (III, IV, and soon V)
Fable (all)
Dragon Age Series
Demon Souls (One of the hardest games on PS3)
Dark Souls (Scratch that, THIS one is the hardest)
Resident Evil (all)
GTA (all, but Vice City is my fave :)
Sims (all..yes, I own all the sims packs from the beginning..so sue me)
Tomb Raider (all except for Dark Angel, I mean really? How bad was that one??)
Silent Hill (1 & 2, it just kinda went downhill from there)
Rome
God of War (all)
Pretty much any game that requires a big friggin sword and mana.

@SyKoGrrL You should check out Silent Hill Origins. It hearkens back towards the style of the first two games, with gameplay and a twisted ass story. (lots like SH2, which is my fave of the series, so this story was easy to appreciate, although it’s connected with the first game)
It does have some dumbass stuff, at least I think so…the alternate universe doesn’t happen on its own, you go in and out of it at will by walking into mirrors. Also, breakable melee weapons.
But I think it’s a solid title in the series, if you’re a fan you should check it out, if you haven’t.

Skyrim.

Resident Evil
Silent Hill
Super Mario
Mario Kart
Shadowrun
Princess Tomato
The Legend of Zelda games
Scratches
Tetris Attack
Tetris
Gabriel Knight