29
votes
What are your top three favorite games of all time?
Why?
What do they have over others you've played?
Do you ever think they'll be replaced/surpassed?
Why?
What do they have over others you've played?
Do you ever think they'll be replaced/surpassed?
You and I have pretty similar taste in games it seems, though I have never played Insurgency. Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress and the Fallout games (originals + tactics + 3 + New Vegas but not 4) are definitely in my top 10 games, as well the Elder Scrolls games too.
However I would probably put Rocket League (the only competitive game I have ever really enjoyed since the Quakeworld or TF2 days) as my top game, and Paradox's EU4 and CK2 in 2nd and 3rd position. Topico 3, Medieval II: Total War, Civ 3 and all the classic CPRG games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Arcanum, Pillars of Eternity, etc) would probably be somewhere in the running as well though.
I suspect Zenimax is more to blame than Bethesda for most of the recent ills, but they are practically one and the same at this point I guess, so the distinction might be moot these days. :/
p.s. Great descriptions of Rimworld and DF, too. :)
As someone who has played Paradox games since Hearts of Iron 2, their games are broad, but with little depth upon release. I do remember that upon release of some of their latest games, like CK2, the only thing you could play were the Christian monarchies and I remember just waiting around for a while to do much of anything. And for EU4, I couldn't even get into it until after a few DLC/patches added some content besides map painting. To be frank, their games are rather bare without all that DLC (especially Stellaris) and if they can pump out more than two expansion packs like they did for their earlier games, why not help them fund it?
All those DLC and patches help expand the game and increase replayability and that's definitely the metric that Paradox is going for. All the development time that the studio puts into these games needs to be compensated somehow. The other options would be to keep releasing sequels and the occasional expansion and dropping support of old titles after a year or so. But, with the immense expandability of grand strategy titles, why should Paradox not take advantage of that?
I'm not sure why this is an issue, yes they add changes to the DLC that are useful in the game (so people will buy them), but they don't push an update that stops you from playing lest you have bought the most recent patch. If you were forced to purchase all the DLC to be able to play the game, then OK, sure, I can see that argument, but customers are not forced to do so, and they even get to play on free patches that add some things to the game.
I was going to ask for your thoughts on FO76, but judging by your thoughts on FO4 needing mods to be playable, I think I know the answer :P Personally I really enjoy it because it fills the void left by two games I've played the most -- WoW and FO4. There's enough MMO grindiness in 76 to keep me playing and enough of what I loved about FO4 there to keep me interested while I do it. The main storyline is sloppy, but the overall lore is really fascinating. It's been really cool experiencing post-war USA so close to the bomb drops (I think it's like 30 years?).
But anyway, FO4...My main character went Minutemen and I've RP'd the hell out of being the General. There are some great mods for that faction and I went all out building up The Castle. Especially had a fun time building a little studio around the Radio Freedom hut (complete with TV cameras, soundboards, and a waiting area for guests). It's just such a fun little faction. It's rooted deep in American history and imo, they're the only morally acceptable faction in the game that stands a chance of fixing it. Especially if they partnered with the Railroad (also deeply rooted in US history, which I love) to bring equality to freed synths.
I agree that Fallout doesn't need multiplayer, and aside from a handful of fun, but accidental, encounters I haven't really utilized it. I don't like PVP and shy of the last quest none of them require co-op. Those accidental encounters were all a case of someone showing up to do a daily quest I was already in the process of doing. So for me I play it like I did FO4, where exploration, the lore, dungeon-crawling, etc. are my focus. It does get a little frustrating where multiplayer mechanics limit the experience. For example, you're severely limited in size and complexity for your CAMPs (functionally similar to FO4's settlements) and that's really annoying because of how much I enjoyed building in FO4.
But anyway, while FO76 is definitely built around multiplayer, it can be played like a singleplayer game. But it's totally understandable if some of the sacrifices made to accomplish multiplayer would put you off on the game entirely.
Have you played flower or abzu? I picked up all 3 in a value pack for ps3 about a year back for $20. Great decision.
I loved Journey. I also got really emotional for some reason and started to cry and I couldn't figure out why given that there is no dialogue. Beautiful game.
I'm going to do games that I primarily enjoy for the single-player, since my thoughts on multiplayer games get...complicated and confusing for me:
Dark Souls
This is my favorite piece of art, period, and while it's always possible for it to be dethroned...my #2 isn't remotely close and I really can't imagine what something better would even look like. I like it for all the reasons every other pretentious nerd on the internet does, but I'll also say that I played it at the worst time in my life and if you read it as a depression allegory (which I absolutely did), every fucking detail of that game fits it perfectly and powerfully and I'll never forget that. I regularly cry just thinking about any detail of Dark Souls. I wanted to edit and expand this more since I feel bad giving no detail at all but I'm crying typing this, it's too much.
Dark Souls III
This game means less to me than the first game on a personal level and much of why I adore it is "oooh, more of what I love from these games in general!" I will throw in that this is, imo, the greatest spectacle gaming has to offer and I went to spend the rest of my life just staring at it.
Fallout: New Vegas
This is the best realization of one of the main things I want from RPGs: Meaningful dialogue with extensive choices that both is influenced by my character and has influence on the world outside of it. Some may say the first two games are better in that department (I disagree), but I think the feeling of engaging with dialogue like that is many times more powerful in a game that has more room for being a lifestyle or just a place to hang out, if that makes sense. Planescape: Torment may have more detailed dialogue and aim for being more "literary," but as a player I'm placed so distantly from it all that it could never feel as good.
I also enjoy the morality of the Fallout setting. I'm a person who only really plays perfectly good and moral characters, and these are games where every major faction is some variation of "destructive as hell and/or evil" and I need to carefully manage how much I can justify interacting or cooperating with what factions and when. Just a wonderful dynamic I have never seen done as well outside of this series.
There's lots of other things to it...I love it on a purely mechanical level, I love the sheer creativity in quest writing, I love the companions, I love the music, I fucking LOVE rural Nevada, I love shitty decaying Americana, I love retrofuturism, I love the optimism of the post-post-apocalypse that's buried under the brutality of it all, I love it all.
And yes, I'm so bad with other people that my main power fantasy is the ability to speak well :P
Note that I'm in the middle of Demon's Souls right now (finally bought a PS3 just for this!) and I'm trying out Sekiro and it's looking like those could take my #3 and #4 spots, so it might be From games across the board pretty soon :P
I have some more interesting picks for favorites if I talk beyond just my absolute tip top favs, I swear!!
Agree on DS1 & 3, other games never captivated me like they did. My number 3 would be Dota 2.
Really difficult one.
I would have to say :
I'm severely ADHD, and because of that the type of games that I play is limited by my attention span at the time, and sometimes this goes against my own taste. Example: I'd love to finish The Witcher 3, but I just can't get through it. Sometimes I can't play any game at all. Here are my favorites:
The only puzzle game I ever loved and finished. Portal 2's puzzles are fair (no gotchas, no pixel hunting), challenging, stimulating, visual, truly three dimensional and do not require memorization nor any "neurotypical intuitions" I don't seem to possess. Apart from that, it's a brilliant game in its own right, with a wonderful story, beautiful graphics and super interesting concepts.
I don't think this game should be in any list of "best games of all time", I just love the shooting mechanics and how I could approach every challenge in different ways that suited my play style. It just clicked.
This game is crack for my ADHD brain. Great music, skippable story, quick rewarding action, small levels, no crafting, no (true) leveling, NO BULLSHIT: just a never-ending flow of delicious 2D violence.
I feel like this list don't make justice to my past, though, so I'll include a BONUS RETRO LIST!!!!
I played these games so much! Back in the day I didn't care much about "beating" games, I just liked doing random missions and creating 2D chaos all over town. Much fun was had! I'm actually old enough to remember my skepticism about the novelty of 3D GTAs...
In many ways, Hotline Miami is a major development of this game's on foot combat.
This game was one of the main reasons I failed 7th grade. Yummy yummy violence. My feeble little brain couldn't handle it.
I was never much of an online player, but I played the hell of Quake's campaign. The shotgun felt so satisfying. Then I got to a scene where I met a bunch of prisoners in various stages of torture/decomposition whatever. They were begging for me to kill them, so I did. It was very disturbing and I stopped playing it for a while after that.
Curious, does that mean you didn't love / finish the first game? If so, what makes 2 work for you and not 1?
After starting with Portal 2, I never put much effort on Portal 1. Probably because visuals are very important for me, and the "downgrade" was a bit hard on my eyes.
It's been ages that I replied to a thread like this, heh. I don't think I can "rank" games, really, it barely ever makes sense (is Civilization "better" than Tetris?), but I think I have decided on the top two: Braid and The Witness.
As evident from every second comment I post on here, I've grown into a hopeless fan boy of Jonathan Blow over the past few years and fell deep into the puzzle gaming rabbit hole. While there are games that are longer or that I had more "entertaining" experiences with, if we're doing "best", I simply think those two games are the best designed games of all time. He's really onto something. It's like Jon Blow games are made with an understanding of the interactive part of videogames that is unmatched and while other famous designers stumble their way to something great through gut feeling and user testing, he's on another level, making sense of what a game is on a deeper level than pretty much any other game out there, including games I love. I've watched most of his talks on youtube and I haven't found a game designer who can articulate the core of what makes a game engaging on this level and you can feel that in his games.
Have you played Baba is You yet?
A couple of my friends that are really into puzzle games have been really enjoying it.
Ohhh, yes I have! :D It's pretty amazing!
Picking three favourites ended up being a pretty difficult task! The games I've played are pretty different from one another, so it's essentially comparing apples and oranges.
NieR:Automata ended up being the top favourite of mine. It's easy to overlook it as a fanservice-y game with graphics that aren't something to write home about (in comparison to what you get from Triple A games). Though, like many Automata players say, it's the furthest thing from that once you've played through the game.
I found the existential storyline, blending of different genres (RPG, hack and slash, bullet hell, etc.), brilliant soundtrack, and melancholic atmosphere, to be absolutely fantastic. On top of that, it's an outstanding example of a video game that makes use of its medium to the fullest potential. It demonstrates it through the little details in the UI and through, well, moments that will leave an incredible impact on you if you are an emotional and existential type of person.
The game isn't without flaws, particularly when it comes to its difficulty system. In the prologue, hard mode is too hard, and overall, normal mode is rather easy. The game gets too easy the more you level up, to the point where I had to make a program which lets you reduce your level back down for the sake of raising the challenge again.
As mentioned at the start, some people could be put off by the "fan service" and somewhat budget graphics. In actuality, though, the fan service is rather minimal and is especially overshadowed by the gameplay and story itself. For me, the atmosphere made up plenty for the lack of 3xA eye candy.
Nevertheless, the game shines in the aforementioned departments. Of course, there is an inherent bias to my choice. Hack n' slash and bullet hell are among my favourite genres. Orchestral soundtracks are my cup of tea, and I'm fond of dystopian settings and melancholic atmospheres. There are plenty of games that match my preferences; however, Automata somehow fulfils all of my tastes, so it's subjectively perfect for me.
I'd actually discuss this in deeper detail, but I'm afraid of potentially spoiling. If anyone here is up for discussing just about any aspect of Automata, do get in touch with me!
I didn't grow up with video games they way some people did. I had very limited availability with them, and I don't exactly look at them as purely nostalgic, but tend to compare older and newer games evenly.
Kirby's Dream Land I first played this game when I was like eight. My brothers and I got a bunch of game boy games from a neighbor, and this was one of them. It took me forever to beat it the first time, but it's one of those games that's just fun.
DOOM (the original idtech1 games) These games are so great because they're still effectively in development, or rather, re-development began in so many different forms, with TCs, mods, expansions, and all sorts of craziness. The recent game felt very close, but the original has a way of requiring movement in such a way that it's almost a dance across the levels that even more intense games like HACX or Brutal Doom build from.
Portal 2 Mike Morasky made this game. It is the only video game I've felt compelled to buy the soundtrack to (I got the 2-disk "Songs to Test By" because it's amazing. It enriches the game experience. It has physics puzzles, large spaces, the slight quirkiness that the Portal series. This is one of those games I think of as just perfect. Portal Stories Mel gets an honorable mention because it felt like Valve would have made it if they had the story idea, and I beat it before they added the easy mode (used walkthroughs on like 5 puzzles).
In order: Night in the Woods, Bloodborne, Rimworld.
Rimworld
I have 177 hours (and counting) in this game. It's really fun, and I hate it a lot. There's nothing quite like getting a good colony running, and there's nothing quite like that entire colony dying to a pack of manhunting chinchillas. Recommended.
Bloodborne
A masterpiece of a game. Even though I've done challenge runs long enough to burn myself out on it, I still love it all the same. The fast-paced gameplay, the infuriating difficulty, and the dripping atmosphere are jointly what make me incapable of shutting up about this game. Highly recommended if you own a PS4.
Night in the Woods
This game holds a very special place in my heart. The town and the people within it, despite literally being furries, feel more human than the characters in any movie I've seen or any game I've played in years. There isn't much gameplay to speak of but I don't see that as an issue. Buy this game.
I haven't played Sekiro yet, but I've heard it shares and expands upon a lot of Bloodborne's qualities. I'll update this post after I get around to it.
Honorable mention to The Beginner's Guide, a more serious game from Davey Wreden, creator of The Stanley Parable.
Quake 2 - LAN parties, decent multiplayer, and extensive modding community, skins and maps. Hell people were producing talks shows inside the quake 2 engine. The demo scene was crazy too. Lithium, LMCTF, Rocket Arena 2 were my main jams.
Civilization 5 - I've played all the civ's since civ2 but civ5 I put an insane number of hours into.
Minecraft - Resisted minecraft for many years, but some friends setup a vanilla server when they started putting villages. Later I found FTB Ultimate and it was a whole new game. Project Ozone 2 titan mode is probably my fav mod pack.
These are the three games I've probably put more time into than any others, other than a FPS shooter that I played in the late 90s that the name escapes me.
This is such a difficult choice. There are a few ways to measure this for me, so I'm just going to name three favorites versus top 3. I think my big measure usually is story, though I also love strategy games like Starcraft.
Favorite in terms of memory is this old MUD I used to play after high school called DragonRealms. I feel like that was more for the memories I made with people than the gameplay itself. I thought having so much detail in a text based world was interesting though.
I think for major studios, The Last of Us was a great experience. Wonderful story, a new IP which was great and just overall a great game.
Pyre from Supergiant is a favorite too. Supergiant in general is always an instant purchase from me. I love how different each of their games are. Pyre stands out because the gameplay mechanics were so weird. I remember hating it at first and I think this one gets props for making me do a complete 180 by the end of the game.
Stockfish (chess)
Pacman
GTA III
Stockfish is unbelievably strong.
Pacman has an ageless appeal that will never be surpassed.
Stockfish is not a game. The game would be chess
Does it really matter?
Well, I'd say yes.
It is chess that deserves credit as a game, while stockfish does a very good job at playing that game with you.
First of all, I really have enjoyed reading everybody's writeups thus far and it has given me a bunch of games to check out. Dwarf Fortress I have been meaning to for a while, but after reading other replies I want to give Rimworld a shot too. Anyway, my less than comprehensive list and explanations:
Rome: Total War
I probably have more hours in this game than any other. I played it quite a bit when I was growing up with my brother and I have very fond memories because of that. It also ignited an enduring interest in history. But beyond that, the game is just plain fun. I think the Total War series handles the divide between macro- and micro- strategy the best out of the big RTS names, in that it has its Campaign map with entirely different mechanics than its battle map, each of which are individually very well done. I do admit that some aspects are lacking; diplomacy has always been pretty bad in TW games, and while it has improved since Rome, it is not much better. When I return to it these days I usually install some mods that add to the complexity, and the modding community for R:TW is great. The newer games have never quite lived up to Rome in my eyes.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
This was the first game I got with Xbox Live, which gave me a lot of joy playing with friends. I was also really, really good at COD 4, which usually isn't true for me and shooters, so it was nice to be among the best of my friends. Online gaming was a whole new experience for me and COD 4 stands out due that nostalgia factor (Halo 3 coming in close second). The story in COD 4 was really unlike other games I had played up until that point, and it honestly felt like you were playing out a movie with an intricate story line. I just have really fond memories of this game.
Minecraft
I keep coming back to Minecraft, sometimes taking years long gaps, but its always just as fun if not more when I come back to it. I recently installed mods for the first time which has really changed how I play. Its the perfect game to play on a lazy weekend without many goals. I always liked open world games, and honestly its hard to think of a more open ended game than Minecraft.
Honorable mentions
Fallout 3
Wind Waker
Harvest Moon: FOMT
Current plays
Legend of Zelda: BOTW
Stardew Valley
Yeah, I'm a couple of versions behind which is a bit annoying but worth it. I usually play on a private server with one of my buddies, and the problem we were running into is that we would start playing again after a long break, get a good week or two in and build an awesome fort and such and then lose interest. The game simply isn't that challenging for two people even on the hardest difficulty. Mods give us a challenge and a reason to keep playing, so that alone is worth missing out on updates imo.
There was a time i had favourite games. Now i have factorio. Never played a game as long and as intense. After years of playing it regulary and 1000s of hours sunk into, it still captures my mind as nothing else.
I started playing it as everybody seems to do, just put down belts and assemblers. Then i tried to bring order into the mess and my factories looked like computer chips. I got bored of that always the same and hyper efficient type of factory. Now i just build this huge mess of a cancerlike blobb and enjoy the shit out of the puzzle aspect of "i want to put this belt right here though the middle of the messiest part of my factory“ and spend hours figuring it out.
Syriously, dont play that game. It will never let you go again ;-)
Lots of good recommendations in this thread, I especially want to call out Fallout: New Vegas and Grim Fandango as excellent choices. I have a lot of love for old LucasArts adventure games, particularly the Monkey Island series. I also want to shout out to the Uncharted series, which isn't on my list, but was a blast to play.
• Skyrim: I had never played an Elder Scrolls game before but I dove deep into this one. I love the richly detailed world, the lore, the magic and crafting systems, the factions, the surprises to discover. It's so much fun to just pick a direction and explore. It's not a perfect game by any measure, but no other game before or since has captured my attention and held it as long as Skyrim. Unfortunately Bethesda's track record has not been great the past few years, so I'm immensely concerned about the fate of TESVI. Only time will tell.
• Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge: I'm sure the claim will be contested, but I think this is the greatest RTS of all time. I love the wacky alternate-timeline technology and B-movie motif. It's fast, funny, carefully balanced and can be pretty challenging too. Even though it's almost 20 years old, with CnCNet and a little finagling you can get it running on modern hardware, and there's still an online community of players to skirmish with.
• Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Kinda cheating by calling this a single game, but the Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles cartridges for Sega Mega Drive / Genesis famously connect to form an expanded single experience and it is sublime. The controls are tight, the graphics are 16-bit masterpieces. The sense of speed is fantastic. Soundtrack is some of the best video game music ever composed. Level design is also brilliant. I can't really think of any faults, except for maybe that the game never properly shows how to control those spinning cylinder platforms in Carnival Night Zone.
Three is tough. I reserve the right to change these at any time.
Doom 2 - This game is so engrained in my teenage years that I can't choose anything else. I spent countless hours playing custom maps and TCs. It was endless fun and still a great game. There are a lot of great FPS games but none will ever stick to me like Doom 2.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Could swing back to Super Metroid depending on mood, but Symphony is a game that feels great to play any day. I've played a ton of great Metroidvanias since, but none have stuck with me like Symphony. I can hear the soundtrack just thinking about it.
Freespace 2 - "I never signed on for hunting Shivans." If I wasn't playing a FPS or Metroidvania, I played some sci-fi sim, whether a mech game or space fighter and Freespace 2 is the best of those. I came to it long after it was released and essentially given to the community for free by the developers, and I found a gorgeous space fighter with a great sense of scale. Like Doom 2, it's got countless community made missions and expansions and it's a damn shame we'll probably never get another one as good as this.
Wipeout on PlayStation - Wipeout changed EVERYTHING. Wipeout 2 refined the first one perfectly, the graphics, the ship handling, the speed! And the music is amazing. So many firsts with Wipeout. I would consider it an almost perfect game, if there is such a thing. Later versions messed up the game mechanics IMO, the ships didn't have the raw power of the first two, they somehow lost the sense of speed. Pity.
X-COM 2 - Man, I cannot get enough of this game. Turn based strategy game. You invest so much in the characters, then they get taken out by a bit of shrapnel or something. And it's brutal! This game doesn't give an inch. You die A LOT.
The story is epic, the game mechanics are brilliant, and after the very first level there's no hand holding. This game is a challenge. Playing in Iron Man mode is something to be experienced. Excellent, Excellent game.
Subnautica - current favourite, mellow, relaxing, and most realistic experience of being under water I've ever seen in a game. Great survival game. Just a pity it doesn't have LAN co-op so I can play with my kid.
Oh man, Wipeout 2097/XL was my jam and the soundtrack was so incredible I actually bought the album (and still have it). So many amazing 90s electronic artists were featured on it: Future Sound of London, Chemical Brothers, Fluke, The Prodigy, Underworld, Daft Punk, Orbital... so good! Album LFTL
And yeah, XCOM 2 is a really great game too, especially with the Long War 2 mod installed. I still go back and play it (and Enemy Unknown/Within) every once in a while when I get the urge for some tactical turn based combat.
p.s. Have you ever watched Beaglerush's XCOM runs? If not you should check them out. He is insanely skilled at the game and I learned a lot from watching him.
Haven't tried that mod, I'll check it out. The videos too!
Fallout: New Vegas (hands down the best Fallout. I love 3 and like 4. The originals are great but I'm not inspired to play them as much because of the genre/platform. Haven't touched 76 and won't touch it. But New Vegas was just perfect. The DLC were heavy hitting except for Honest Hearts which was less heavy but more aesthetic and refreshing. The systems Obsidian put in and the story/dialogue is just God tier.)
World of Warcraft (kinda weird to say it now given the state of the game, but Mists of Pandaria was legendary for me. Class design was great. Loot systems were nice and easy then. Story was fun. Music was God tier. Timeless Isle was also God tier gaming content. SoO was a great raid despite people hating how long it was current content. I didn't mind the dailies and content lull I thought MoP was 9.5/10 awesome, and playing WoD and BfA just confirms how awesome it was)
Call of Duty Black Ops 1 (shout out to BF2 and BF3 but Black Ops 1 was peak shooter design. great campaign. great multiplayer. video recording features. zombie mode. the gambling game modes where I would go around knifing in gun game or tomahawking in sticks n stones just to be an asshole. the killstreaks and equipment were balanced but still fun and customize-able. MW2 was a killstreak mess. COD4 was fun but a bit too basic. and MW3 and BO2 were a mess of equipment and killstreaks as well. Only Black Ops 1 well and truly struck the balance between simple and complex. The only killstreak I'll never enjoy because it's difficult to counter is dogs. You can counter blackbirds with jammer equipment or counterUAV killstreak. you can counter helicopters with missiles or just hiding from them. but Dogs you would inevitably be stuck somewhere up high hiding from them and then enemies shoot you anyway. dogshit killstreak and it's a shame they still have it in BO4 lol)
Virtua Tennis is the purest form of man vs. man competition I've ever experienced in video games. It's easy to understand how to play and rewards skill. Prior stuff like fighting games always seemed to favor those who could memorize the moves. Virtua Tennis is just tennis.
Doom. It blew minds when it came out and it is still awesome.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater. My hands hurt from playing. It's so good.
I just came back to this post to see if I remembered to put NBA Jam on there. I didn't, and now I'm trying to decide if it is better than Tony Hawk. That's a tough one. Consider it the honorary runner up.
NBA Jam is a great multiplayer experience and THPS is better for one, I think. To be fair, I did play a lot of horse and graffiti in Tony Hawk, but the real fun of that one for me was career mode. So I think it's a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison.
Yeah, I think I made the right choice putting THPS in there as #3, but man, in the NBA Jam heyday, that game was huge. I wonder how many quarters (and dollars!) went into those machines. If I ever had the money and the space in my house, there'd be an NBA Jam machine in it.
Sly Cooper 2 on the PS2. it's a fun platformer with different styles of gameplay and lots of content. it's probably been surpassed by other platformers by now but it's what I'd play all throughout elementary school and I still come back to it.
Garry's Mod. it has such a huge and long-lasting community that has been pushing out content regularly for well over 10 years, you can build almost any contraption you can think of or get immersed in the multiplayer having heated arguments with 12 year olds from across the world about where you're allowed to build. I don't think there will be a true successor any time soon with the longevity of its engine and its endless stream of content.
fallout 1. I only played it for the first time last year and it's just one of the most solid RPGs I've ever played, the characters are interesting, the gameplay is challenging, and the story is put together very well. each fallout game since has built on the original formula but a few have taken major steps backward, I think fallout 1 is great just to see how the basic structure of a post apocalyptic crpg can work very well with very few drawbacks compared to the Bethesda's buggier recent entries.
Republic of Rome is hands down my favourite board game. 4-6 players take the roles of political factions in pre-imperial Rome. It has a very unique gameplay system where the players work together to keep Rome afloat and safe from external threats while each tries to manoeuvre themselves to a position where they can take total control over the Republic, basically becoming Caesar and ending the Republic. It's a co-operative game where all players can lose but it's also a cut-throat competition where only one player can win. Just like real-life politics.
Our group gets together once a year to play and over the years our games have taken anywhere between 4 and 18 hours to complete. This year's game, which lasted for 14.5 hours, was actually the first one in ten years where someone won. There was much jubilation. Then again, there was also 12 bottles of wine, two warm meals, lots of snacks, a sauna, and all the other standards that we arrange for our annual games.
Will RoR ever be surpassed? It definitely should be. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that this 30-year-old game hasn't been bettered, although there are a couple of designs inspired by it which I haven't tried yet and have heard good things about. RoR's rules are unnecessarily complicated and inelegant, the latest edition's board and cards have numerous mistakes, a full game can take a long time to finish, and as a player you can end up in a position where you are out of the game for hours, with very little to do. But that's what the wine, the grapes, the cheese plates and the great company are there for. And despite its dated design, it is an absolutely unique experience, if you do it right.
Emlyn Hughes International Soccer is probably my most played computer game. I'm not sure if it's my favourite one, but it's something that I have kept coming back to over and over again, so it might well be. I own six Commodore 64s just so that I can play the original for years to come. Back in the early 2000s I even tracked down one of the programmers and visited his home (yes, I was invited). You could say I have been obsessed by this game.
Why? It may not be the kind of simulation that games like FIFA or PES attempt to be, nor does it showcase the arcade perfection of the Kick Off and Sensible Soccer series. But it's a brilliantly tactical game. A game of skill and precision. And one where you can score a goal with your heel. Or the back of your head. Or your butt. If you are good enough, that is. It may not look like much, but there is a lot of complexity and elegance in its simple systems.
2300 AD is my all-time favourite role playing game. It combines hard scifi with a brilliantly outdated early 80s vision of what the future would look and act like. Our group practically ignored the handful of alien species in it and concentrated on the geopolitical struggles between the French and German galactic empires. That is, until we ultimately got caught up in the Kafer war, came in contact with a space-time continuum portal, and things got a bit complicated towards the end. Years later, as I was watching the end of Interstellar, my brain went "yup, been there, done that".
Every pen-and-paper role playing game is of course only as good as its game master and players. We had a great group and a game that lasted for about six years (while we also played a parallel fantasy game campaign). I have many great memories from that imaginary world. Actually, whenever the first winter frost comes with its peculiar smell of half frozen ground, I for some inexplicable reason think of Beta Canum Venaticorum, a particularly interesting system found in the French arm of the galaxy. I'm not sure why, but that's what happens.
As a rules system, 2300 AD wasn't particularly innovative or interesting. As was usual with our role playing games, we did a good job of ignoring the rules and concentrating on the story and the world. Will it ever be surpassed? Probably not for me, as I haven't had a role playing group for over a decade now and can't really imagine being able to find one any time soon.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire
The best turn-based strategy game I've played. Not as polished as later Civ entries, and maybe there's some nostalgia involved here, but the depth of strategy allowed made the game very engrossing for me.
NFS Most Wanted 2005
The best cop chases in any game ever. No nostalgia factor here; I reinstalled the game late last year (after being disappointed by Payback) and for the most part it still holds up.
Portal/Portal 2
It's hard to even describe why I like these games so much, but reasons would include puzzle design that strikes the right balance between difficulty and frustration, a tone of humor I quite enjoyed, and the way it takes a fairly simple basic mechanic and comes up with so many ways to employ it.
So many to choose from. I'll pick ones that I'd pick up again today.
Half-life (and all of its mods) for being the first game I'd ever played with an online gaming experience; it had a terrific single player campaign, but also opened its mod box to everyone for a wonderland of user-created content. All of those compressed sound effects and Quake 2 graphics just fill me with nostalgic joy; and I think I'm fortunate(?) enough to be in the first generation that gets to re-visit places I'd spent a lot of time in as a kid and they haven't changed at all whatsoever. It's surreal-ly appealing.
The Last of Us for being the first game that showed everyone the untapped, dramatic storytelling potential video games have (especially when backed by a huge budget). Less about shoot this person, move over here-- but also not an RPG. It struck a balance of a linear story with enough microcosms of decisions to make that you never felt the rails of the story. I firmly believe the story of that game is not one that could've been as effectively told through any other medium.
SOMA for similar reasons to TLOU; it was the first horror game that turned hypothetical, existential questions that are easy to answer for fun and walk away from, and put them into a story with the decisions in your control. It was probably the most powerful sense of dread and insight I'd felt in a long time.
Well obviously the first game on the list would be Mine
craft fieldsweeper. With variations in difficulty options, it just doesn't get old. You just get better at it.Second place has to go to an entire category: Pinball. It's hard to find a bad pinball game, but my personal favorite is Carnival. Pinball games are on a whole different level when compared to video games. It's such a tactile experience to play a pinball game; it's as if the machine becomes a part of your body as you fight to launch the ball to your intended target. The fewer fancy effects the more tactile and engaging it becomes, so even with new innovations you aren't really improving over the basic gameplay mechanics that became standard more than half a century ago.
Third on the list is Virtua Fighter. Not the first game, but the series as a whole. While you can argue that the last game was the best from an objective standpoint, I love everything about every game in the series. I particularly enjoy the fact that there isn't really anything supernatural in the gameplay, so you don't get cheesy fireball moves from across the arena. It's one of the only fighting games I've played where the outcome of the game seems completely fair; if I lose, it's not because of some glitch or balance error, it's simply because I wasn't as good as my opponent.
Sega isn't interested in continuing the series because, let's face it, you can't improve on perfection. But Tekken is a good second choice.
Re: Your #1 game: Do you mean Minesweeper?
Have you played Virtua Fighter Kids? One of my favorite (completely goofball) games for the Sega Saturn. Fighters Megamix was also an outstanding spinoff game featuring the VF cast.
I did. Fixed it.
Virtua Fighter Kids is literally the only VF game I haven't played. It plays like VF1, doesn't it?
I'm not a huge fan of Fighters Megamix, though. It's not a bad game, but I don't like crossover fighters in general. Even though I love every one of the characters and properties represented in Megamix, crossover games always seem inconsequential to me.
VF Kids is a clone of VF2 with big-head models and pitch-shifted voices. There are also unlockable CG cutscenes for each kid character. It's been years since I played (I don't have my Saturn anymore) but IIRC the stages were also kiddified (just a background swap, I think). The music may have also been redone. It was a pretty silly game but it ran silky smooth and made for a lot of fun in my high school years.
I'm really sad to have not seen Hollow Knight mentioned anywhere, because that is absolutely my favorite game. The art and music is breathtaking, the combat and platforming are succinct and satisfying, and the world, story, and characters are enjoyable and make you eager to learn more. My next two are pretty hard to pin down and would likely change depending on the day you asked me, but right now I'd probably say that Battlefield 4 or Zelda Windwaker would be them. Honorable mentions are the latest God of War, Dark Souls, Metroid Prime, Age of Empires II, Halo 3, Zelda BotW, Cuphead, Fallout NV, or Horizon Zero Dawn.
I love Hollow Knight but I hate the metroidvania style. Being lost or having to explore in a platformer is extremely tedious to me. I wish the game was more linear, with a more challenging level design to compensate. My ideal game would be a mix between Celeste and Hollow Knight.
I can see that, I felt that way to some degree but I loved the way the map was set up, and how it lent itself to stumbling upon secret rooms and bosses. Trekking around the world got old sometimes, especially when I wasn't sure where to go, but I felt like they designed the layout well enough to let you discover it naturally. I did have to use some outside resources to track some things down after I finished, but I was glad for the experiences I got from just playing it blind for my first run. Currently sitting at 111% completion (out of 112%), but I almost don't want to get the last percent because it means I've officially beaten it, haha.
Celeste is really good, I haven't had a lot of time to really delve into it, but I did try it out and had a pretty good time. Think I set it down around level 4, but I have every intention to beat it at it's fullest! Finding the Pico 8 was awesome, beat the whole thing in one session and was too burnt to finish that level after, had to take a break!
Have you tried Shovel Knight? I've been watching it for some time, from what I've seen it may be close to what you're describing. It's level based with platforming and combat, but I haven't looked too far past that to avoid spoiling it. Anyways, if you haven't tried it, you may enjoy it!
Oh I really did not like Shovel Knight. Here are my main problems with it :
The level design is pretty bad for a platformer. It almost feels procedurally generated. I wasn't impressed by any of the rooms in each level. What I want is to feel like the developer is constantly testing me, making me become better or introducing new platforming elements. In Shovel Knight, the challenge feels inconsistent to me and some of the rooms really have no thought put into them.
The colors. Oh god do I hate these flashy colors. Pixel art is getting really tiring as it is, but coupled with these atrocious colors, it becomes even more redundant. The shades of yellow and blue are especially ugly.
Other than those two points, the game was ok. The controls were tight and the music was alright.
This is a hard question but here is my list.
It's an amazing platformer that will most likely be surpassed as it has it's problems, but it's just so much pure and innocent fun at a decent price.
I think Odyssey will be surpassed, because I though Mario 64 wouldn't be surpassed then Odyssey came along.
It's tons of fun at the start, but you can't really repeat the experience of learning everything if you play it a second time.