Best Games You've Ever Played

[Jester]

Alright, I'm tired and getting easily confused. If I understand correctly, I need a program that can read Blorb files to be able to play these word games, however I cannot find it! Admittedly, I gave up after the first three links, but like I said, getting sleepy here with a touch of a cold. Each site wants me to download pearlBlorb to create my own blorb files, but none of them offer blorb readers for those not interested in creating their own blorbs. Also, where can I get good blorb files to play?

Some more modern games can just run directly in a browser through Parchment: Taco Fiction, on the front page, is like that. For some older games, you need an interpreter, and you need game files. Different games use different interpreters - Glulx, Z-machine, TADS being the big ones. All are available for download. Links to games are found either directly on the page, or with a link to the IFDB, or Baf's Guide.

If you want good games, the easiest place to check are the Xyzzy awards. They're the Oscars of the IF community. Almost everything from the 2008 xyzzy awards was awesome.

If you want my favorites, here's a quick list: Spider and Web, Nightfall, Blue Lacuna, Make it Good, Varicella. All of those can be played online, I think. Those are all pretty hardcore - if you want something lighter, maybe more beatable, try Hoosegow, Violet, or Alabaster.

And, as mentioned earlier in the thread, Steve Meretzky's classic infocom game, A Mind Forever Voyaging, which you may have to go hunting for. But it's well worth it.

-Jester

Edit: Updated Taco Fiction link.

[Taem]

Some more modern games can just run directly in a browser through Parchment: Taco Fiction, on the front page, is like that.

Parchment? I tried Taco Fiction first, downloaded it, then tried to open it. The file was a blorb file that requires a blorb reader to view?!? Oh well, I'll dig a little deeper when I get home from work. No longer tired and I'm pretty interested to check this out - a little motivation goes a long way !

Heh, like last night; this is pretty off-topic: I thought the audio on my wifes computer went dead when I went to play a YouTube video and heard no sound, however I could still hear system sounds. So I tried Firefox without any trouble and the audio worked... So I spent almost an hour figuring it out, restarting the computer, all kinds of fun stuff. In the end, I had to open Google Chrome Task Manager (didn't even know that existed before) and end Shockwave, then refresh the page and whola, sound returns!

[Jester]

Parchment is just a browser interpreter, that removes the need for a separate game file and interpreter to be downloaded. Just find a "play it online" link, and you're off to the races.

I've amended the post to include that. For most of those other games, you can find such a link in the top right hand corner at IFDB.

-Jester

[Wyrm]

<delurk> Might as well throw my 2 cents into the mix.

Xenogears
One of the most engaging games I have ever played. The story was immense and well thought out, not to mention long enough to really draw you in. Granted, it's been a long time since I played it so this might be nostalgia talking, but I put the story from that game at a quality you don't even see in most novels anymore.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
I haven't played the sequel yet, so that might be joining the list, but this is easily the best superhero game ever made and deserves to be in the top if for no other reason than that. Aside from that, it's perfectly executed. The story is dark and haunting, but not a downer. The atmosphere just sucks you right into the game world and keeps you hooked.

Final Fantasy 3... err... 6
Released in the US as 3, but really 6, the last SNES FF game was really quite good. It had a large cast of characters and went into depth on all of them. This is still my favorite FF title of all time.

King's Quest V
Really the game that started it all for me. This was one of the first games I ever played, and I had to go over to a friend's house to play it because we didn't have a VGA monitor/graphics card on our home computer. This was, and always will be, a true classic.

Suikoden
One of the only games I've played that actually made me cry, and still pulls at my heart strings when I think about it. The characters, all 108 of them, were memorable and thought out. The gameplay was great and had some unique twists on the conventions of the time.

That's my list. Considering where I am I should probably explain why Diablo 1/2 aren't on said list, which also happens to be the same reasoning for Guild Wars not being on the list. I've probably spent more time playing Diablo 2 and Guild Wars than I have every other game I've ever played combined. I just passed 6000 hours on Guild Wars since it's release in '05 and I'm pretty sure my D2 time was somewhere around that number as well. So, how can I have spent so much time on them and not have them as my top games of all time? Well, to be honest, they don't really stand out as amazing games. What keeps me playing them is they are incredible expansive games and there are about 10,000 different ways to do something. Everything else about the games, however, is average, with the exception of Guild Wars being one of the most beautiful games I've ever played (even though it isn't the highest res game with the most textures and whatnot). Being a big story person with a degree in English literature, in order for a game to make my best of list, it has to have a great story. Gameplay comes next, then the superficial stuff.

</delurk>