What's your favorite game(s)?

[Prototime]

What is your favorite game or games? Could be favorite of all time, favorite in a particular genre, an old favorite, a new favorite, etc. And why is it your favorite?

I'll start with two. Personally, the game that was my favorite as a kid, and that I have the fondest memories of, is Star Fox 64. Absolutely loved the 3D aerial shooting mechanics, the characters, and the branching paths.

My favorite PC-exclusive game is TIE Fighter. Another aerial shooter, but not a rail shooter like SF64, and much more a space flight simulator. I loved the variety of ships to fly; managing the shield, weapon, and energy systems; and the vast variety of mission objectives.

I have a few other favorites I could mention, but I think this is good to start! What about you?

[luisxd]

Mostly MMOs, I've played a lot of them but my favorites are Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft and Ragnarok Online. Also fast paced shooters like Call of Duty and Apex Legends.

[cucubits]

This is one of those questions where the first thing that pops into your mind is probably the correct answer.

In my case it's Half-Life (1). It had the most impact on me and I've enjoyed it the most. Close 2nd are the DeusEx games.

 

Edit: I can't believe I forgot about Gothic. Yeah, top 3 is now complete.

[Aaron44126]

@Prototime, Star Fox 64 is excellent, I have played it through many times.  I do like that it can be completed in like 45 minutes.  Doesn't take long to do beginning to end so I might just sit down and play it when I don't have much going on.  (That's not very often anymore, though.)

 

Single-player gamer here.  I haven't been able to get into MMOs or online shooters.  But as for favorites...  Where to start...  Too many to pick from, so I'll go be genre!  (I started writing this post and it got too long, sorry.)

 

2D platformer — This is where it all started for me, playing Super Mario Bros. back in the day.  I have to give it up for the classics, Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island.  More recently, I really enjoyed Yoshi's Woolly World, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and Celeste.  (In the 3D space, I don't think that anything has topped Banjo-Kazooie.)

 

Action — I enjoyed the Batman: Arkham series and the modern Tomb Raider series.  I want to check out Horizon: Zero Dawn when I get a better PC later this year.

 

Adventure — Being a Nintendo gamer growing up, I fell in with Zelda and I love A Link to the Past (which is run to play randomized), Ocarina of Time, and Breath of the Wild.  I'm definitely looking forward to the unnamed BOTW sequel which should be landing later this year.  I really enjoyed Ōkami which is a "Zelda-like" available on modern platforms.

 

Metroidvania — Probably my favorite genre.  The actual Metroid games are favorites of mine (2D + Prime).  I enjoyed Metroid Dread this year.  AM2R was also amazing.  Ori and the Blind Forest was great.  Hollow Knight is probably my favorite, though, — if there is one game on this list that I would suggest that people check out, it would be that one — and I'm also really looking forward to Silksong.

 

Strategy — StarCraft (Brood War).  I discovered this game by accident and really took to it.  I also really got into StarCraft II and played on the ladder for a while when it was new.  Disappointed that the series is probably dead now with the direction that Blizzard has been taking; but at least there are two spinoff studios with ex-Blizzard employees working on RTS games, so maybe they will come up with something cool.

 

Puzzle — The Talos Principle stands out.  Also, the Portal games.  I wish they'd make another.

 

JRPG – I've enjoyed these since I was into Final Fantasy (IV, VI, VII, and IX come to mind as favorites, I didn't really like the newer ones) and I have also enjoyed each of MonolithSoft's Xenoblade games.

 

Narrative – I got Life is Strange cheap somehow and really enjoyed that.  Haven't played any of the followup games though.  I want to check out Detroit: Become Human (again, when I get a better PC).

 

Random – ActRaiser is a crazy action platformer / world builder sim combo game and there has never been anything else like it.  I like to play through it from time to time.  (Talking about the SNES version, I haven't played the remake yet.)

[electrosoft]

Quake holds a top spot in my heart. When I was younger we would travel to gaming cons just to play. We lived on IRC and scrimmaged for hours on end. My younger brother and I would eat, sleep and breathe Quake everything.

Street Fighter II:TE - Before quake this was our world and we spent hours daily in arcades playing.

Deus Ex is another one and redefined what could be done with a game and the entire Deus Ex universe still holds a a special place

World of Warcraft is something I loved from day one and even though it is long in the tooth I still play it. I've been playing since January 2005.

Final Fantasy VI - Still my favorite SNES game and probably home console game of all time along with Chrono Trigger.

 

 

[cucubits]

3 minutes ago, electrosoft said:

Quake holds a top spot in my heart. When I was younger we would travel to gaming cons just to play. We lived on IRC and scrimmaged for hours on end. My younger brother and I would eat, sleep and breathe Quake everything.

I recall well this exact scenario. We must be close in age. I was in high school and would spend evenings and weekends in an internet cafe, on IRC and we would play Quake 1 on LAN for hours and hours. The rocket launcher was my favorite.

[Sandy Bridge]

Probably 90% of my game time is in the strategy genre, at least if you define it broadly to include such things as business simulators.  There are times that I want something more mindless, but most of the time I want to have something to think about and consider in my games.

Within the strategy genre, the three mainstays that have stood the test of time for me are Europa Universalis IV (and Paradox games in general), Civilization (III and IV, but I don't like V), and Railroad Tycoon (II and III).  I'll play a lot of other strategy games, too, but those are the perennials.  Either EU4 or Civ III is my all-time most played game, although in both cases I've played them enough that I often have to play with some self-imposed limits to make it more interesting nowadays.  Railroad Tycoon drew me back in heavily this fall, including playing some community-created scenarios that I'd never played before.

For just relaxing some evening?  It's hard to beat Killing Floor 2, or the original in the series for that matter.  I also recently revisited Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and the mechanics still hold up well.  I'm played out on the Halo series, although I played tons of Halo: Combat Evolved on PC back in the day.  Probably my favorite map there was Boarding Action, where there was a void between two battlecruisers in space, with three (five?) stories on each cruiser, an open area to shoot across the void, and teleporters to go back and forth between the sides.  Play it with two players, with snipers and the overpowered pistols, sneaking around carefully, always worried your rival would come up from behind and assassinate you with their pistol, yet equally concerned they'd spot you from across the void and headshot you. I'd play it with a friend late at night, sometimes with a typically-silent voice chat as well, and the tension was palpable.  It could be several minutes before one of us found the other.

Similarly I doubt I'll ever go back to Rocket League since they moved Snow Day to competitive.  I loved Rocket League hockey in casual mode, but the wait times for finding a new game are significantly higher on competitive, and that kills the pacing.

[serpro69]

I love different types of games, my most favorite are RPG and Strategy games.

When I hear this question, the first thing that pops into my head is The Elder Scrolls 3.
I think if I had to pick a list of 3, it'd be TES 3, Diablo II and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. The last two aren't just Great games of their time IMO, but they're also reminders of countless fun hours spent playing these with friends during childhood.

[Eban]

2 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

Probably 90% of my game time is in the strategy genre, at least if you define it broadly to include such things as business simulators.  There are times that I want something more mindless, but most of the time I want to have something to think about and consider in my games.

Within the strategy genre, the three mainstays that have stood the test of time for me are Europa Universalis IV (and Paradox games in general), Civilization (III and IV, but I don't like V), and Railroad Tycoon (II and III).  I'll play a lot of other strategy games, too, but those are the perennials.  Either EU4 or Civ III is my all-time most played game, although in both cases I've played them enough that I often have to play with some self-imposed limits to make it more interesting nowadays.  Railroad Tycoon drew me back in heavily this fall, including playing some community-created scenarios that I'd never played before.

For just relaxing some evening?  It's hard to beat Killing Floor 2, or the original in the series for that matter.  I also recently revisited Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and the mechanics still hold up well.  I'm played out on the Halo series, although I played tons of Halo: Combat Evolved on PC back in the day.  Probably my favorite map there was Boarding Action, where there was a void between two battlecruisers in space, with three (five?) stories on each cruiser, an open area to shoot across the void, and teleporters to go back and forth between the sides.  Play it with two players, with snipers and the overpowered pistols, sneaking around carefully, always worried your rival would come up from behind and assassinate you with their pistol, yet equally concerned they'd spot you from across the void and headshot you. I'd play it with a friend late at night, sometimes with a typically-silent voice chat as well, and the tension was palpable.  It could be several minutes before one of us found the other.

Similarly I doubt I'll ever go back to Rocket League since they moved Snow Day to competitive.  I loved Rocket League hockey in casual mode, but the wait times for finding a new game are significantly higher on competitive, and that kills the pacing.

You may (or may not?!) like BSG Battle Star Galactica. Role turn space combat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMCFrz_Aiv0

 

[defcon42]

My main game has been the same since 2007. The Lord of the Rings Online. I got one of the last lifetime accounts in 2008 and don't have to pay a monthly fee. It's not perfect, but i am a fan of Tolkien, like MMO and in combination with the lifetime subscription it is a no-brainer. Since i don't have that much time on my hands for gaming as in earlier years, there is also not much motivation to learn something new, if the old is good enough. My laptop can run it in 4k on an external 32" display with ease. 

[electrosoft]

10 hours ago, cucubits said:

I recall well this exact scenario. We must be close in age. I was in high school and would spend evenings and weekends in an internet cafe, on IRC and we would play Quake 1 on LAN for hours and hours. The rocket launcher was my favorite.

Oh man I used to love getting and locking down the RL. We would LAN locally with a few other of our friends every weekend and do FFA to warm up, 1v1 and tons of 2v2 on DM3. Truly magical times!

3 hours ago, defcon42 said:

My main game has been the same since 2007. The Lord of the Rings Online. I got one of the last lifetime accounts in 2008 and don't have to pay a monthly fee. It's not perfect, but i am a fan of Tolkien, like MMO and in combination with the lifetime subscription it is a no-brainer. Since i don't have that much time on my hands for gaming as in earlier years, there is also not much motivation to learn something new, if the old is good enough. My laptop can run it in 4k on an external 32" display with ease. 

I didn't even know LRO was still around. I played off and on during the early days but went back to WoW and EQII. I might have to take a looksy and see where it stands today.

[Hertzian56]

Yeah that's definitely a metric that changes over time. I'm just a single player offline, I think I'd get too addicted if I got into online/friends LAN games.

 

I will mention games that I always have installed.  COH1, FO4, Yakuza series, GTA's, TW3, Silent Hill 2, Dying Light 1, Hollow Knight, Arkham series,  the newer open world AC's like Odyssey and Origins, RDR2, Splinter Cell BL, Alan Wake, Deadspace series, rfactor 1, Max Payne 2, and a lot of smaller games. Overall I think The Witcher 3 is my favorite. I have played hundreds of hours, done many combos afa endings and etc and still wouldn't mind starting a new game and/or firing up any of my archived saves.

[Jarhead]

Typically gravitate towards management sims. Started out with RollerCoaster Tycoon and SimCity 3000, still play RCT2 to this day and have picked up some other sims as well (Transport Fever series, Parkitect, Project Hospital, that sort of thing). Kerbal Space Program is right up there as well, and over the last few years I've gotten pretty deep into PayDay 2.

[Custom90gt]

I've thought about this but I don't know if I could name just one game even if I was forced to.

One of my first favorite games was Super Mario 3 on the NES followed by Super Mario World on SNES!

I recall playing Doom and Myst on my old 486DX2 with great fondness.  Later it would be Command and Conquer, Warcraft, and Fallout 2...

Then I got a N64 and my favorite games there were Super Mario 3D, GoldenEye, and Ocarina of Time.

On the Xbox my favorites still are the Fable series.

Other favorites have been the Red Dead series, GTA series, Breath of the Wild, Doom Eternal, Age of Empires, the Witcher series, Guild Wars 2, and the Batman Arkham series.  Oh and I spent a large number of hours while I should have been studying in college playing Battlefield 2.

So this one post single-handedly dates me, lol

[GrandesBollas]

I'm a glutton for punishment.  Why I stick with Bethesda is besides me.  As buggy and broken as these games are, I still go back to playing Fallout 3, 4 and 76.  Good thing for unlimited data.  When the bugs get too much, I delete the offending game.  Miss the game too much, I re-download.

[aivxtla]

Nice too see all the users' gaming options, might have to try some of those that you guys have mentioned so far.

For me:

Tactical Strategy: Total War Series especially Rome II and Napoleon, love fielding thousands of troops and the realism with morale, ie fear etc, troops running away from battle and so on. WW2 or modern equivalent to it for me would be the old  Close Combat Series especially IV/V, first game I saw where enemy troops actually surrender and vehicles could break down/run out of fuel, and these days Men of War - Assault Squad 2 and Call to Arms. For space age strategy I love Homeworld 2 and it’s Star Wars mod.

Grand Strategy: Probably Hearts of Iron IV (WW2), Guess Total War also fits here as it's a hybrid game series.

Semi Realistic FPS: Squad, Red Orchestra 2 (WW2 Eastern Front), Rising Storm Vietnam after trying those, Battlefield series now seems too cartoonish for me, ie no shell deflection mechanic in tank to tank combat and the combat in general. Still not bad either though. For twichfest type games I'd say Unreal Tournament or Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2005) both of which had tons of  amazing mods, were my favorites. My first foray into FPS was probably Medal of Honor on Sony Playstation.

 

@Custom90gt, I too spent countless hours on BFII lol in college, along side Battlefront II, Red Orchestra (at the time a UT2K4 mod) lol. AOE1/2 were also childhood favs, before I discovered Total War. 

[duskw4lker]

May I pull the nostalgia card?, If I may: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Wolfenstein 3D, Day of the tentacle, Star Wars Rebellion, Prehistorik 2, Lemmings, Jill of the Jungle.

I know that is not 1 game of all time, but those games were my first and still to this day dearly beloved. I blame my dad. oh and Quake 1, I sat beside him while he played Q1 because that was really too much for me.. the Shambler! the Vore! literally stuff of nightmares.

[ssj92]

Donkey Kong 64 

Pokemon Gold Version 

by far these are probably my fav and I have re-played them too many times 

 

[ryan]

Best game is a tie between shenmue 1/2 and half life 2. shenmue was groundbreaking interaction wise and correct me if im worng nothing still touches it that way not even GTA V even though by todays standards GTA V is the better game. Half life 2 was exciting/fun/intelligent. 

 

on a happy note one of my other top games crysis got a remaster and the patch 3 version is out. it improved textures sigh once again and performance is alot better. I'm on the level core for the first time in 9 years as I usually only play the first few levels over and over again. also its possible but don't quote me on this but I think it got upgraded to DLSS 2.3 over 2.2 and It looks great, however dlss 2.2 looked great also. hard to tell if im just getting old and senile or it was indeed implemented, and actually does have some visual gains.

 

TLDR

 

Check out crysis remastered it got an update

[Eban]

On 2/7/2022 at 12:07 PM, duskw4lker said:

May I pull the nostalgia card?, If I may: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Wolfenstein 3D, Day of the tentacle, Star Wars Rebellion, Prehistorik 2, Lemmings, Jill of the Jungle.

I know that is not 1 game of all time, but those games were my first and still to this day dearly beloved. I blame my dad. oh and Quake 1, I sat beside him while he played Q1 because that was really too much for me.. the Shambler! the Vore! literally stuff of nightmares.

 

Lemmings......wow. I used to play that on Amiga 

 

[Aaron44126]

4 hours ago, Eban said:

Lemmings......wow. I used to play that on Amiga 

Lemmings fan myself...  Actually did some bugfixes for this engine recreation that runs on modern Windows (but behaves like the DOS version) if anyone wants to give this game a new play.  🙂  (Just download, unzip and run.)  https://github.com/AaronKelley/LemmixPlayer/releases

[Custom90gt]

Wow what a throw back with that, thanks @Aaron44126

 

I remember downloading the Lemmings 3D demo on AOL and it took 12+ hours to download 15MB, yes 15MB...

[ryan]

12 hours? back in the day i had dsl and i think that was 3kb/s fast as heck lol back then. funny looking back at what we thought was great. 3kb.s vs 1000mbps now...not much difference as everything is huge size wise

[Maxware79]

Borderlands 2 has to be my #1 of all time. The characters and dialogue were fantastic and really drew you into the game. I put well over 1000 hours into that one.

Spent a lot of long nights getting all the special weapons in Goldeneye on the N64. Some of those were near impossible. That was a great multiplayer game at the time. 

[Eban]

5 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Lemmings fan myself...  Actually did some bugfixes for this engine recreation that runs on modern Windows (but behaves like the DOS version) if anyone wants to give this game a new play.  🙂  (Just download, unzip and run.)  https://github.com/AaronKelley/LemmixPlayer/releases

I just downloaded. Will give it a spin this weekend.

 

Thank you for the link