Name 10 favorite games

[Wapptor]

Don't really have a top ten or an order for that matter, but some real favorites so here it goes:

Halflife: Could be my alltime favorite game (even though I said I didn't have one :P ). Mods and MP are nice but I'm talking about the singleplayer. Revolutionary in every way. Insane graphics when it came out, even high end now with the HD pack. First FPS to actually have a good and involved storyline. Some of the coolest sequences ever, with the music and the marines creepy radio chatter combined with the intensity of those weapons made for a memorable experience. Frightening AI, the marines weren't stupid and the aliens all acted differently. On top of that, cool storyline, COMPLETELY first person (no cutscenes) and that gaunt looking G-Man always leaving you to wonder. The ending made you tear your hair out but it was all worth it. Expansions were good too, Opposing Force was very well done, almost a completely new game. And if you like the game like I do then Blue Shift was just icing. Its been five years and now halflife 2 is coming around, I cant wait!

Diablo and Diablo 2: Gorgeous graphics (hey not 3D but I think very artistically beautiful), engaging storyline, fabulous locations and some real interesting gameplay the first time around. Character customization never gets old, and each time your characters are different, I will never get sick of this. Some of the best cutscenes ever. Only drawback? Mob of random fools on b.net ruining our play experience with their 1337ness and ha><0ring...

Warcraft II: Pure fun, one of the first "real" games I played. Gotta love amasssing a huge army and then just laying waste to everything in sight. Plus good units and pretty good balance, I prefer SP.

Freelancer: Current obsession. Massive realistic world, huge variety of ships. Good servers on MP are monitored so the script kiddies and 12 year olds get banned quickly heh. Beautiful graphics and an engaging SP along are what make this so appealing. The universe lives, reacts and responds to what you do and in MP it only gets more complex. Great game, even though I admit it could've been better.

Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast: Coolest combat ever, incredible looking lightsaber (stared at it for a long time). Force speed just topped it all off. Flipping, pushing, hacking etc etc all in a completely classic star wars location. You feel like you are part of a STAR WARS movie, unbeatable.

Doom (1, 2, 2tnt and plutonia etc or is that final doom, too many! :D ): First game I ever played, borrowed discs from a friend and had a lot of fun until my parents thought it was too violent and took it away :blink: ...

and last:
Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix: This is the most intense shooter I have ever played. Nothing really beats the "visceral punch" of unloading your M4A2 carbine into some scumbag terrorist. The weapons are intense and seem very real and powerful. Add to that the most realistic gore and some cool environments and this becomes a very memorable game. Besides, what beats an FPS but an FPS where the people actually look like they were shot!. Multiplayer is fun too, kind of like an upgraded counterstrike.

Honorable Mention: Did anyone play "Chex Quest"? :ph34r:

-Wapptor

[jms]

Elric,

It's interesting that you bring up Chrono Trigger's linearity--I found it to be one of the most non-offending linear games I've ever played. To me, linearity only becomes a problem when I don't like what I'm being fed, so to speak, or the linear nature of the game causes the player to get completely and utterly stuck, i.e. if you can't solve this puzzle, you can't go anywhere! Neither of these were a problem for me in Chrono Trigger. I felt that the plot, though segmented as it was through the different time periods, was very fluid. And obviously, as you noted, the game isn't dificult at all; I don't think anyone has gotten stuck on any of the "puzzles" in Chrono Trigger (are there any?).

Aside from that aspect, the lack of difficulty in the game didn't bother me at all. In playing console rpgs particularly, I just surrender myself to the storyline of the game. I can't think of a console rpg that actually had difficult-to-solve puzzles, other than those which weren't just bonuses for the over-achiever. I don't think I've ever been presented with a genuinely difficult puzzle that prevented me from going any further in the game. The only challenge, if any, would be the difficulty of combat, which, due to the lack of random combat, you can adjust yourself in CT. If you want the game to be more difficult, just run past all the enemies! (Coincidentally, I'm starting to see how you finished the game in one sitting now... :))

I think that much of the difference between CT and FFVI was in the way the stories were presented. FFVI feels more like a novel than a game to me. You follow Terra as the central character, sure, but the central character isn't *you* like it is with Mario in Super Mario RPG and with Chrono. You follow the party and plotline around in FFVI as they were, whereas in CT, you feel like you're the main character and make all the decisions accordingly (even if, as is the case with 90% of them, they don't affect the outcome of the game other than the ending). I enjoyed the elegance of Chrono Trigger; it made me feel like I was a part of the action, and it had a few neat hooks, like the ability to solve quests in the past and see their effect in the future, and the death of yourself as the central character. I don't think CT was as epic as FFVI, and no one can beat Kefka B) (except Golbeze?), but overall I think I enjoyed Chrono and the gang more.

[jms]

Kryn,

I agree with you 100% on the Kefka vs. Lavos archvillian issue. Kefka was a complete screwball--like my buddy in Figaro castle said:

he's a few cans short of a six pack

I think it would've been a lot more effective if CT pulled a Magus disappearing act ala Kain in FFIV and brought back Magus as the final enemy, instead of that gerbil of a villian.

On the other hand, the characters in FFVI just felt cold to me. I felt that there were too many, and inevitably, some just ended up completely flat. I know it's probably not fair to count Umaro and Gogo in that, but so many characters just had their inevitable side plots, and then were essentially written out of the game. I prefered the fewer and more developed characters of CT, though cliched they were. I can definitely see your side of the arguement on this however--I'll have to give it some more thought (which gives me a convenient excuse to play through them both again). On a side note, I thought that the characters of FFIV were more developed than the characters of any other console rpg I've played. The Cecil-Kain interaction, Cecil-Rosa, Tellah-Golbeze, Palim and Porom and the closing walls...the characters were unparalleled.

The music of the games is certainly debatable. FFVI had good music, but honestly, will you ever get the CT main theme, the title music, or even the castle forest music out of your head?
---

Outside of video and computer games, I'd add Magic: The Gathering to the list. MTG is a great example of a game that has remained successful by breaking its own rules, time and time again. While a set of core rules exist for the game, the written text on the card itself always takes precedence, allowing the designers to add new rules and continue to evolve the state of the game. I'm not sure how else to give praise to the game other than by saying that it sucked up a good 5 years of my life, and I'd still be playing if I had the disposable income. Has anyone else played?

[dahak_i]

First I'd just like to bump Ultima 4 and 7 (at least, part 2) up from Elric's honorable mention status.

I've played both for hours beyond count, just enjoying the complexity of the games. However, In Ultima 7 part 2, my game always crashed in the magic dungeon... If someone could reccommend an OS that the game was stable on, that'd be a great help. A good friend of mine and I are slapping together a system with a few different OS's for the sole reason of playing old PC games :-D.

My all time favorite game for easter eggs, however, has to be Final Fantasy. Erdrick's (From Dragon Warrior) gravestone brings a tear to my eye every time.

Dragon Warrior was also a great game, good difficulty, plotline, etc... Just well done to the core.
Honorable mention goes to the second of the series, though I didn't play it. Also, wasn't there a third?

Finally, a game I was suprised not to see on the list already:
Castle of the Winds. I'm considering the entire plotline, from the Village to the demon, as one game.

It was the first game I actually mailed out for (I was like, 11), and I couldn't wait for that disc to arrive. And when it did, oh, that fun started alright.

It wasn't complex, it wasn't all that pretty either, but it was fun. Just a dungeon-crawling item hunt (hmm... not like d2 at ALL). Random dungeon floors each game, with a select few constants. A story you uncovered a bit a time, which at the very least I enjoyed. Like I said, not complex, but it got the job done, and it was entertaining.

I actually stumbled across those discs a few years ago, and took them into my high school. A few files hidden on the network and boom, whenever I wanted a little mindless fun instead of class it was just a password away.

So... to recap :
Ultimas 4 and 7
Final Fantasy
Dragon Warrior series
Castle of the Winds (entire game)

Edit: Corrected Elric to Erdrick... don't know what I was thinking >yawn< stupid night job.

[Zafarium]

My favorite games are:

1) Final Fantasy 7-9 (Playstation)
They are so easy to replay over and over again. There are so many different character combos that are possible.

2) Tenchu 1 & 2 (Playstation)
I like being a ninja and silently sneaking up on people and chopping their head off :ph34r:

3) American McGee's Alice (PC)
It is like a messed up versoin of Alice in Wonderland. You are returning to Wonderland only to find that it is corrupted. You have to kill the Queen of hearts at the end to free Wonderland.

[Jedi Knight]

My all time favorite game for easter eggs, however, has to be Final Fantasy. Elric's (From Dragon Warrior) gravestone brings a tear to my eye every time.

Actually, it's Erdrick ;) Dragon Warrior 1 was my favorite game when I was 10-11 years old, and I completed the game several times. Monsters were quite tough, especially in Dragonlord's castle, and had some nasty spells. Brings back good memories :D

[WarLocke]

Mine have pretty much already been mentioned:

Shining Force and Shining Force II (Genesis): I remember reading somehwere that Shining in the Darkness was the unofficial first game in this series, but I could never get into it. The SFs, though, were classics. The underlying game mechanics were quite complex, but the gameplay itself was sublimely simple. I'm playing through SF again now, alongside Bahamut Lagoon (by Square for the SNES) and while BL has alot of neat extras (semi-autonomous dragons, spells that can effect the battlefield, etc), SF is just more fun. And doesn't start every level 1 character with ridiculous 800 hitpoints, blargh.

Final Fantasy I, IV, VI, VII (SNES, PSX): What can I say? They're the Mario of console RPGs. They aren't particularly unique or innovative, but Square had an amazing ability to weave a great story that drew players in. I haven't played the more recent ones (VIII, IX, X) so I can't comment on them. Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest was some fever-induced nightmare I came up with when I was a kid.

Diablo (PC): You thought I wouldn't mention it, eh? Diablo gets a spot because it managed to hold my interest for nearly 4 years, and spawned a nearly infinite number of playstyles (LAWs, BNMs, GOTHs, AMZs, Iron Man anyone?). Diablo II, while fun, didn't have near the longevity. And there was no Hellfire.

Fallout and Fallout 2 (PC): What do you get when you meld a post-apocalyptic satire of the 50s' terror of nuclear war with a robust engine and incredicle writers? Instant classic. The sheer number of choices make these games amazing. I pretend that Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel never happened.

Sierra's Quest For Glory games (PC): I remember when the 16-color EGA Hero's Quest was released; my friend and I would pull 20-hour weekend marathins of the game. It was just that good. I bought the VGA QFG1: "So You Want to be a Hero?" when it was released, and played that one too. I finished it with all three classes, even going as far as to totally max out my Magician (100s across the board). The adventure game framework with just enough combat to keep it interesting, along with the incredibly well-done comedy/satire make it the best adventure game I've ever played. QFG IV and V weren't so good, however. And I only got to play snatches of Trial by Fire (II) and whatever the third one was called (the jungle-based one).

The Gold Box AD&D games (Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, Pool of Darkness, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager, among others) (PC): These were some of my first PC games, and I loved them to death. In hindsight, most were fairly basic, but I believe every AD&D nut should try at least one at some point.

Wing Commander, Wing Commander II, Wing Commander Armada, and Wing Commander: Prophecy (PC): My first space sims, and still the best. Something about the Kilrathi and Nephilim just oozes character that the other series lacked. The series seemed to lose some of its foundations in the later games (III, IV, V, and Prophecy), nearly turning into a "movie broken up by shoot-em-ups", but I don't think the change was necessarily all that bad.

X-COM: UFO Defense (PC): Simply the best PC turn-based tactical combat game. Ever (Although I haven't played Jagged Alliance II). The open-ended nature and the sheer variety of things to do were great. Shooting Sectoids with Heavy Plasmas never got old. The sequel, Terror From the Deep, was decent but actually had worse graphics and was unnecessarily hard. X-COM: Apocalypse never happened. I'll sic a Chrysallid on anyone who says otherwise. If it would only not run at 50x speed on modern computers...

Planescape: Torment (PC): THE best CRPG (one of the few true CRPGs, actually) ever. The fact that combat was almost always trivial, that the game truly was about the plot, puts it in my #1 slot. There were so many ways you could do just about everything, it was great.

Tekken II, III, Tag Tournament (Arcade/PSX/PS2): Simply the best fighting games ever. Realisticly responding characters (none of the Virtua Fighter bee-floating crap), real moves (no hadokens), and interesting characters (Nina/Anna, King, Yoshimitsu, Lei, Ling), along with the deepest fighting mechanics I've ever seen = Instant classic. I didn't see a Tekken machine until after I had mastered Tekken II, so it didn't leave an impression on me. Tekken IV did: It's crap.

Ultima IV (PC/NES): I never got into the other Ultima games, but the freedom to wander around the world and try to become the embodiment of the Virtues was extremely cool. This was probably the first truly non-linear, open-ended game I played.

Phantasy Star II, III, IV (Genesis): The Final Fantasies of the Genesis. These were just incredible, boasting a unique (at the time, at least) fusion of magic and technology. They tended to emphasize the dungeoning aspect of the game more than the plot, although this distinction blurred in III and IV. III also was unique in that there were 4 possible endings, depending on who the main character married and the actions of their offspring. Many people didn't like the generational aspect of the game, but I thought it was great and rather unique.

Freedom Force (PC): One of the few superhero games to actually get published (the only other ones I can think of are Superhero League of Hoboken, Hero-X {Which really doesn't count since it rode on FF's coattails} and some forgettable Spider-Man/Captain America titles for my old Tandy), FF has the advantage of being incredibly good. It hearkens back to the 60s campy four-color comics, with extremely fun missions, incredible graphics, a great physics engine (whack a thug with a lightpole and watch him fly!) and a robust hero creation system that can make just about anything you can dream of.


Random notes and stuff:

- King's Bounty: LiquidDamage, I'm fairly sure KB was a PC game ported to the Genesis. At least, I remember playing it on my Tandy back in, oh... '90 or '91? In any case, it was an extremely cool game.

- I'm playing through Deus Ex and System Shock II at the moment, and they're looking like they'll make my list. DX is just so amazingly complex, with tons of ways to get things done and many different ways to change the flow of the plot, and SS2 is just mindwarpingly freaky.

- The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind is in residence on my HD, but I can't seem to get into it. By all accounts it's a great game, though. I've never played the other TES games, though (Arena, Daggerfall, and Redguard, I think?).

- I really (really, really) want to play Final Fantasy: Tactics :(


- WL

[Feryar]

I finished it with all three classes, even going as far as to totally max out my Magician (100s across the board)

I did that with all three classes, and then repeated it with 200 and 300 in QFG2 and QFG3.
(Except in QFG3 I didn't max out the spells.. that was just too much for me)
Damn I miss those first years at school when I actually had some spare time ;)

[Copadope]

Worms. My personal favorite is the original Worms for PSX, probably because that's the first one I played and got really good at. I'm sure if I really got into some of the newer PC sequels with online play I would love them too, but in my book nothing beats the original on PSX. The gameplay is bascially similar to the old PC classic Scorched Earth, but instead of tanks you have worms. Turn-based strategy at its finest.

I discovered it very much by accident. My brother and I just got a Playstation and didn't have many games, so we went to the little video rental store down the street because they just started carrying PS games. They had about 5 or 10 of them total, and Worms was one of them. We weren't expecting much from it, but our choices were limited so we gave it a shot.

Instant classic. The intro, the "FMV" clips, the high-pitched worm one-liners with British accents, the banana bomb... all add up to an amazingly entertaining and quite frankly hilarious game. I've played countless hours of multiplayer Worms with my friends (up to 16 players on one machine, but we usually stuck with 4) and I can't think of a better party game. Easy to learn, difficult to master, and always a blast. Replay value is infinite because the battlefields are randomly generated unless you enter the code for one that you like.

If you've never played a Worms game before, I highly recommend doing so with a few of your best friends.

[Jester]

... the greatest (IMO) RPG of all time, the unmatched Wizardry 7, Crusaders of the Dark Savant.

Nonlinear. Challenging (read: VERY challenging). Complex. Replayable. Enormous. Enthralling.

Wizardry 6 is just shy on the one side (too hard, lacking somewhat the sophistication) and Wizardry 8 on the other (too easy, not enough meat on the table).

The game I would pick for the "if you had to take one game to the hermitage" question.

Jester

[[wcip]Angel]

Warlocke.
Wing Commander V was Wing Commander: Prophecy. I know, because I have the poster right here that came with the game. Hmm. Let me rephrase, I had the poster right here, before I went to Italy and came back with 2 flails that had to get a special place on the wall.

Also, the full names for Sierra's Hero's Quest-series are:

Hero's Quest I - So you want to be a hero (that title still cracks me up) :lol:
Hero's Quest II - Trial by fire
Hero's Quest III - Wages of war
Hero's Quest IV - Shadows of darkness
(I didn't know they'd made a fifth installment. I only have the QFG anthology)

Deus Ex has already been mentioned, so I won't say as much about it as I had planned, except that it's an innovative game which lets you design your own character as well as your own future by making choices in a game which shows you the repercussions of what you do. Everything can be done in at least three different ways; imagine how many things you do in a game, and you have an almost infinite number of ways you can finish this game.

Resident evil is one of the best games for the playstation (there's also a perfectly fine port to the PC) and introduced gaming to adults. It leads the survival-horror genre away from the quiet, intense spookiness of Alone in the dark and and towards a frightening, violent suspense-ridden roller-coaster ride. The acting is so awful you'll fall off your chair laughing each time "Barry" or "Wesker" opens their mouth. The storyline is excellent, the gameplay is great, and the thrills are pants-wettingly cool!

Silent Hill II
Where Resident Evil threw a seven feet monster through the wall at you, Silent Hill does nothing. Where the crows of Resident Evil suddenly burst through the window causing severe strain on your heart, Silent Hill ooses an eerie static, and where the gigantic spiders of Resident Evil jump on your face from the ceiling, Silent Hill whispers in your ear.
There are -no- "fright"-moments as in Resident Evil which are designed to cause cardiac arrest, but the mood it creates is unnerving. The only negative thing about Silent Hill, is that you just can't bring yourself to play it. The storyline is so complex and deep, it's like a piece of beautifully grotesque poetry with hints in the weirdest places of what the theme of the game might be. A plot guide from gamefaq's is desperately needed to understand everything in this game.

Metal Gear Solid
Equal or superior to its sequel in every respect, this stealth 'em up has you playing the role of "secret agent" Solid 'David' Snake, the very embodiment of "cool." What's special about this game is not the gorgeous graphics or the cool gameplay. It's also not the music (which rocks by the way). The storyline and the characters are so detailed and enchanting, it's hard to realise this is just a figment of an insane person's imagination (Mr. Kojima) I always love it when I like the bad guys more than the hero, but in this game, I like everybody. Just when you think the hero is the coolest guy you've ever seen, the game throws you another immensely detailed, lovable character. It gets to a point where you just don't want to kill the bad guys, because you know you'll never get to see them again (or at least that's what you think.)

I'd mention Final fantasy VII if I could, but sadly I don't have hours and hours to write a full description of this masterpiece.

I should also mention that Interstate 76 is one of the most addictive games I've ever played. The story is great, the music is better, and the gameplay is some of the coolest I've ever seen in a game. Ok, the graphics suck, but it's still a riot to play!

(Damn English oral exam. I'll have to go and talk about World English and what-not. I'll be back.)

[Yricyn]

No best games thread is complete without mentioning Leisure Suit Larry. :lol: