Zeusthecat

Favorite Game Of All Time

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I searched and found a few threads somewhat similar to this but figured I would create a new one since they are all from several years ago. So for this one simply post your favorite game of all time and provide an explanation for why it is your favorite. Guidelines are as follows:

  1. You must pick one favorite and provide an explanation.
  2. At the end of your post, you may list up to three runner up games if you desire. No detailed explanations allowed for your honorable mentions but a brief sentence is okay.

Within the last week I have decided that my all-time favorite game is Minecraft. My friend and I have been running our own server on Survival Hard mode for a little over a year now and we have never touched creative mode, never lowered the difficulty, and we are still playing in our original world. We periodically get a little burnt out after playing every day and take a few months off but we just keep coming back and getting sucked right back in. This last week we both started playing again and it hit me that no game I've played has ever managed to stay so interesting and engaging for this long.

 

A few things crystallized for me coming back to the game this time:

  1. Our world has history. Going back to areas that we explored long ago (literally over a year ago now) and discovering our old shelters that we built as we traveled and finding our old torch trails is fucking awesome. I love finding old maps and random shit that we put into some chests in these shelters and ended up forgetting about.
  2. Everything you do has purpose and feeds into something else. Through all of our projects and contraptions, we have found that we need everything, even dirt, all the time. For instance, we might need gold to build powered rails. So we go on a mining expedition, discover amazing new things, fend off enemies, gather a bunch of other materials which we incidentally need for other projects, reach our gold goal, then make our way back to the surface having had an amazing experience. Then we might go back to our cities and tend our gardens for other materials, tend the livestock, build a few more things, harvest the tree farm, go hunting enemies for their drops, craft new armor with enchants for a nether expedition... and it just goes on and on. I literally have half a dozen projects I'm working on and it just never gets dull.
  3. Some people say they don't find this game interesting because there is no explicit goal. In my mind there is. It is the same goal we all have as human beings: survive, accumulate shit, build better shelters and cities, re-shape the land as we see fit, and just use our creativity to make works of art or cool contraptions.
  4. Patches are very significant in this game and keep things fresh for me. Since we are still on our original world we also find that a new patch motivates us to put everything we are doing on hold and venture out to explore distant lands where new chunks will generate with whatever new stuff was added. We have traveled to many distant lands and it is always exciting.

I fucking love this game. I have so much more to say about why this is my favorite but this post is long enough. Long live Minecraft!

 

Honorable Mentions:

  1. Chrono Trigger
  2. Ocarina of Time
  3. Harvest Moon Magical Melody (Gamecube version)

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This is a tough one for me; I like to consider myself an enthusiast, and so I have abundant respect and appreciation for numerous games. Fallout 3, Red Dead, Limbo, Bioshock Infinite (as of late), Witcher 2, and Dark Souls all circle my top listings, but my absolute favourite game has to be Portal 2.

 

Reason is, I have never once enjoyed a gaming experience cover to cover (or whatever the equivalent of games would be) as much as I did Portal 2. The humour was on the nose to my own and what Portal has over any other experience (in my mind) is that after completing it I never once felt the need to play more. As a would-be-completionist (if time allowed) I constantly find myself looking to replay older titles but in the process lose the impossible to recapture first-time experience. The game was everything I wanted it to be, and everything it needed to be to justify its existence.

I could go into how I cried of laughter the first time in my life from hearing the words "Edge-less Safety Cube" or how I to this day proudly chant the words of Cave Johnson when my friends say "When life gives you lemons..." but to those who played Portal 2, you already know the experience. I (for whatever reason) just found it to be the greatest atop any game I've ever played.

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I want to be able to say some obscure indie game no one has played or some old school game everyone has forgotten about, but in the end I have to be the guy who says Team Fortress 2.  I don't care about hats in the least.  I don't pay any attention to the competitive side.  I haven't tried a very many mods or custom maps.  I just really enjoy playing the game.

 

The first online multiplayer game I ever got into was Team Fortress Classic.  I had so much fun playing after school.  It was the game I would run out of the bus and into my house to play.  At one point, I even joined a "clan" but we never amounted to anything and quickly broke up.  I waited so long for TF2 and when it finally came, I was beyond excited.  I didn't have a gaming PC at the time, so I played it on the 360 (via the Orange Box, which is probably one of the best gaming packages ever).  I met a lot of people playing everyday and we formed another "clan".  That scene died out when it became apparent that the Xbox version would never receive the updates the PC version had, but I'm still friends with several of those people today.  I've even met some of them in real life.  One of them lives in Seattle and during a PAX took me to visit Valve.  But that's a story for another day.

 

I love that it's a team game and not just about killing each other (although there are modes for that).  I love that each class plays completely different from the others.  I love that it's not serious and is completely silly.  I love that it's just as fun to play strategically as it is to goof around.  I love that the different weapons are not just reskins or simply better versions but have interesting benefits/penalties.  I love the strictly co-op MvM mode.  I love pushing the cart.  I love capturing points.  I love that final push in the last few seconds that means the difference between victory or defeat.  It's not a perfect game by any means and there are plenty of things that annoy me.  But it's the one I always come back to on a regular basis because it's just FUN.

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I can't really write a long paean for it on my cellphone, but for me my favorite game of all time remains Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Fourteen years after the fact, it remains the perfect fusion of gameplay and theme. Its fiction is on par with better sci-fi novels and pervades the game through the descriptions of technology and secret projects that are the heart of the moment-to-moment player experience. There are several game systems that are visible and malleable but operate on their own terms. It has better characters than most shooters, let alone any other 4X. The win conditions are multiple, adaptable, and responsive to player intent. It's a symphony with not a single sour note.

 

Every time I boot Alpha Centauri up, which is usually every six months or so, I expect it to look its age at last. Instead, I'm humbled once more by one of the best game experiences and sci-fi stories I've ever had the change to have. It was magical when I was playing hotseat multiplayer with a friend in junior high, it is magical now when I do a mindworm rush in grad school.

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I want to be able to say some obscure indie game no one has played or some old school game everyone has forgotten about, but in the end I have to be the guy who says Team Fortress 2...

 

I also played a lot of this on 360 and loved every minute of it. The depth and balance in TF2 is not to be underestimated in my opinion. Which reminds me, I finally booted up Steam recently and finished downloading the multitude of updates for this game. I should play it. 

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Super Smash Bros Melee.

 

Me and my brother 100% it within a year of having it. To be clear, this is a rather difficult game to 100%. Hidden stage and characters, tons of single player challenges, and the big one is that there's these little collectible trophies, about 300 of them. You need to complete every event, every match, every little thing, and then you need to get some from a vending machine, which spits out random trophies for coins you earn by playing more.

 

We got to 100%, and then he brought the gamecube memory card over to a friends house, and accidentally brought the wrong one back. A savegame not even nearly 100% was on it. We shrugged and 100% the thing again.

 

Years later, after not playing it for a while, and being rather rusty, I could still match up to tournament players while they were "teching" (cheating) and I wasn't (because it was lame). Easily matched over a thousand hours on that game. Which is odd, because I don't really enjoy any other fighting series except Smash Bros.

 

That being said, Fable 2 is a not too distant second. I absolutely adored that game, and I only put 50 hours into it instead of over a thousand, thus hour for hour being my favorite game of all time. I adored collecting every bit of the tons of treasure scattered about the world, exploring every nook and cranny of this beautiful and detailed game, reading every laughter inducing book, getting every NPC possible to fall in love with me and follow me around like a creepy love zombie, and playing dress up for hours with my character (a woman), making her a fancy pirate or a sexy bandit or whatever. Which makes Fable 3 a close second to Spore as my most disappointing game of all time.

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(Wouldn't it be cool if people highlighted their choices in some magical way.)

 

Planescape: Torment. I have to give a longer answer later as well, I have an exam tomorrow.

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(Wouldn't it be cool if people highlighted their choices in some magical way.)

 

Yeah, good point. I edited mine and used the power of Bold.

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Warcraft 3

 

If I had to separate WC3 proper from WC3 custom games each of those two things would still be my all time favorite game (well I guess they couldn't both be, but they would be #1 and #2)

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My favorite game of all time is probably Deus Ex. I went through the game a dozen times, devouring the insane amount of hidden and optional content it has. Then I got the Shifter mod and went through it a couple more times. I love the kitchen sink conspiracy milieu, I love all the easter eggs, I love how perfect the level design is. It's totally my ideal blend of action gameplay and RPG elements. Also, three endings, no "good" or "bad" endings.

 

But the game I've probably sunk the most hours in is Team Fortress 2. 324 hours total according to Steam. Mostly support classes, though I'm pretty damn aggressive for an Engie.

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Depending on my mood, it's either Total Annihilation or System Shock 2 for me.

Though the more i think about those two, the more i want to blow this out into a big list of favorites.

Let's just throw Quake in here too.

I fucking love Quake.

Edit: Maybe also Morrowind.

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The Curse of Monkey Island: I loved this game. I loved the art, the animation, the voice acting, the music, the story, the humour, the puzzles... it all worked so well for me as a child. I have incredibly fond memories of it, and I think because I played it at a young age that it really influenced what I like in games now. Every once in a while I get an incredibly urge to go back and play it.

Also, I remember my mom bought it one day while we were shopping. I lived in a small town, so there were no game stores, but one hardware store had a rack of discounted PC games, and on that rack was Curse for $10-$15. My mom bought it because she thought it looked neat. I wasn't completely convinced, and tried convincing her to get something else (I now have no idea what that other game might have been). She sort of put her foot down and bought Curse, and I am eternally greatful for that.

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Warcraft 3

 

If I had to separate WC3 proper from WC3 custom games each of those two things would still be my all time favorite game (well I guess they couldn't both be, but they would be #1 and #2)

 

There needs to be more conversation about Warcraft III. I played that game intensively for about a year and it totally shaped my view of online communities. Sean was talking about how important this game was for him, I'd love to hear more from him or anyone.

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I know this is usually typical nerdbait, but Chrono Trigger. I remember staying up until 5-6am on a weekend as a 4th grader because I never played a game so engrossing before. 

 

I never realized what a huge gamer touchstone it was until I was in my 20s, because I just remembered it as that time travel game I played once. Now I've bought it and replayed it on almost every platform it's come out on.

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I know this is usually typical nerdbait, but Chrono Trigger. I remember staying up until 5-6am on a weekend as a 4th grader because I never played a game so engrossing before. 

 

I never realized what a huge gamer touchstone it was until I was in my 20s, because I just remembered it as that time travel game I played once. Now I've bought it and replayed it on almost every platform it's come out on.

 

Excellent choice. That is definitely at the top of my list as well. When I was 16 I would spend all of my paychecks at pawn shops buying up older games. One day I saw Chrono Trigger on the shelf being sold for $75. I had never heard of it but figured it must be a decent game or at least a rare game for it to be going for that much. So I bought it without hesitation and eventually got around to playing it. The artwork, story, gameplay, and music blew my fucking mind and it instantly became my favorite game and has remained one of my favorites to this day. I have since played it through multiple times and have beat it at every point possible to see every ending. I also have the Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross soundtracks and still listen to them regularly.

 

Speaking of Chrono Cross, that game will always hold a fondness in my heart. I can't think of a game that had more of an emotional impact on me than that one.

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WAIT WAIT WAIT. Before this derails, I think this thread will have the most value if everyone picks one, and only one game. Pulling off lists and second choices might be personally gratifying, but I think it's much more interesting if you HAVE to choose. So, Sno, you have to whittle it down, man. And Zeus, no cheatsies.

 

My favorite game has to be Morrowind.

 

gamescrn_morrowind_02-B.jpg

 

It's not just about the hours I sunk in, but the experience the game offers. Arriving as a stranger on strange shores, having to delve into various alien cultures, and a story arc that has you slowly seeking political, rather than physical, power. The customizability and sheer creativity that you could put into your play are unrivalled in later Elder Scrolls games. I love how this game doesn't insult your intelligence, and has you seeking out obscure locations with only trifling instructions. Here's a game that tasks you to travel to a huge, dark ruin to find a tiny, tiny Dwemer box, while certainly not guiding the way with arrows, compasses or a quest marker on a minimap. Nope, you'll just have to find the damn thing yourself.

 

Games have shied away from this challenge, which wasn't about difficulty so much as putting in effort. I had to work and sweat to get through Morrowind and its beautiful expansions, and because of that the experience was much more powerful. Most games offer cleaner and smoother rides, and don't have nearly the emotional impact because of it. 130 hours of Skyrim feel a lot less impressive, because in that game, though I created my own challenge, I rarely felt truly challenged - in an exploratory way, not a 'boss difficulty' way.

 

On a personal note, this was the first game I played where at the end of most dungeons and cellars and so on, there usually was nothing. No chest, no prize, not a thing. At first, that annoyed me, but then gradually I started to really appreciate just the objective of exploring caverns without needing a carrot dangling before me on a stick. Jumping on top of a huge waterfall rock inside a murky cave is its own reward. Morrowind taught me that.

 

I'm rambling. Morrowind is magical.

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I also loved the whole angle of diving through conflicting mythologies to try and piece together a historical account that approaches the truth, instead of, at the end of your long journey, having clarity delivered to you through a expository info dump. Even when you talk to people who were alive during the events you are trying to decipher, they give you biased accounts and fragments of the full picture.

Daggerfall was an oddity for me, a toy. Morrowind made me a fan.

 

 

WAIT WAIT WAIT. Before this derails, I think this thread will have the most value if everyone picks one, and only one game. Pulling off lists and second choices might be personally gratifying, but I think it's much more interesting if you HAVE to choose. So, Sno, you have to whittle it down, man.


I don't wanna! Boo hiss!

Grargh!

FIne, alright.

Total Annihilation.

I think it's tragic and insane that Total Annihilation was not a more influential game than it ended up being. Playing its eventual successor in Supreme Commander feels much like playing a divergent evolution of the RTS genre that never quite existed, where instead of burrowing down into tactics and micromanagement, things kept blowing up bigger and bigger. I've always wanted for more of this emphasis on the macro out of my RTS's, but most games that claim to offer that tend to become mired in more 4x concerns. TA and SupCom are the only things that really offer it, and SupCom has a lot of problems while i think TA holds still holds up all these years later.

 

One of the more enduring elements of Total Annihilation for me was actually its UI, which came across as revelatory in 1997 after coming off of games where you were explicitly limited to one action at a time for any given unit. Bolstered with gradual additions made during Cavedog's support of the game, TA was absolutely just years ahead of its contemporaries. (Including, i feel, Starcraft.) I actually just recently reinstalled Total Annihilation, and its awkward implementation of radar aside, there was no "I wish i could do this" with the UI, it was all already  there. The build queues, the patrol AI, the waypoints and order stacking. SupCom, a 2007 game, is a game that had to change surprisingly little when following up on TA. (Many of the changes to the formula seen in the initial release were actually perceived as a step back, and the game was patched to play more like TA.)

Just as an example, one of the key things i do in a game of TA is set up an air factory, and from that factory i draw a set of patrol routes, and then i set the factory to start making construction aircraft. The patrolling construction aircraft will assist in construction efforts, repair damaged buildings, and reclaim loose resources on the map if the economy is strained. When i lay down some air repair pads along those patrol routes, the patrolling aircraft will automatically make use of these structures when damaged. When i realized that i could automate things in TA like that and focus on the broader conflict in its entirety, it was just over, no other RTS was going to cut it.

I mean, and the massive maps, the hundreds-of-units cap, the colossal artillery cannons and the flimsy walls meant to provide temporary solace, the huge naval battles and the strafing bombers.


The Krogoth.

The distinctive, sophisticated economy model that provides you immediate feedback on how you're handling things, ideally with enough material in your stores to let you right things before they capsize.

Then there's the at-the-time advanced technical details like the physics-simulated projectiles and the 3D terrain. Or things that are still very uncommon, like vehicles leaving behind wrecks that contribute to an evolving battlefield full of obstacles and resources. (Or forest fires! A real problem in maps thick with jungle.)

It was also one of Jeremy Soule's first OST's.

 



It's also fairly notable how how extensively moddable TA is. To this day it still has an active modding community, but back then, even Cavedog was in on it. They iterated on the game weekly, always adding new features, new maps, and new units for free on top of and beyond their two retail add-ons.

By the end of Cavedog's support, the game saw well over a hundred additional units. (Two entirely brand new catagories of units and a wildly expanded sea game among them.)

There was also Cavedog's short-lived multiplayer matchmaking service "Boneyards" with its completely free and hugely ambitious galactic conquest metagame, players registering with either faction and setting out to claim worlds for their side in ranked battles. (The setup would be familiar now, but this was 1997!) Some of the best multiplayer memories i have are from that, there was a great community and Cavedog employees were active participants.

 

I could probably keep going, i adore TA, i think it's still the best RTS i've ever played.

I even like the dumb simplicity of its barely-there grimdark narrative. (There are also a ton of missions, and truckloads more with the two add-ons installed, but the campaign content is really a secondary attraction. TA is a skirmish/multiplayer game first and foremost.)


TA's available on GoG, so if anybody's never played it, i highly recommend it.

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It's far from perfect but i come back to Empire: Total war at least twice a year

Although i play TF2 religiously.

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The original XCOM. I still remember the first time I played it when we went to my Uncle's for Christmas. 

 

 

Although i play TF2 religiously.

I got to give TF2 an honorable mention. Over 2,100 hours. 

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I've been think about this for quite a while... and I still cannot come up with my favorite game of all time. I cannot find a way to quantify favorite. I think I have a short list, but there is no clear winner. And now that Rodi imposed the one game rule it's only making it even more difficult.

 

I have to think more about this. Anyone got an idea on how I can define "favorite of all time"?

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The one that gives you the fuzziest feeling inside. The one that changed how you looked at things or felt things. The one.

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WAIT WAIT WAIT. Before this derails, I think this thread will have the most value if everyone picks one, and only one game. Pulling off lists and second choices might be personally gratifying, but I think it's much more interesting if you HAVE to choose. So, Sno, you have to whittle it down, man. And Zeus, no cheatsies.

 

Rodi, your high post count compels me to obey your rule. But can we compromise a little?

 

I agree that people should have to pick one game. I have really enjoyed reading the explanations for why a game is someone's favorite of all time and having to pick one seems to result in more compelling posts.

 

However, I see no harm in a brief sentence or two that gives a few honorable mentions. I think it makes it easier to pick a favorite if you can at least mention a few others that are in the running so as not to do them injustice. Plus I think it will foster some good "oh cool, you like one of the same video games as I do" type of discussions and give more perspective on why some of these games are considered favorites. When I see multiple people agreeing on one of their favorites (such as Warcraft III and TF2) it gets me more excited to either try that game or go back and play it again.

 

Also, I think it is fair to change your favorite game if and only if you happen to play a game after you've posted your favorite here and that game happens to become your new favorite. I think it is fair to say that you can't retcon though.

 

That's my two cents. At this point I defer to the wisdom of the forum veterans. Let me know what you think and I'll modify the rules in the original post.

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Gosh, I'm no forum master. The place I'm coming from is that I feel that when you have to make that super sharp decision, you get to a focal point that you won't get if you can just list a bunch of runner ups. Sure, I'd have liked to name three more games, but having to pick one (and let's be honest, no one's keeping tabs on what you choose here) offers an opportunity to say a few interesting things about that game without the destraction of 'oh, and also this and this and that, without any further explanation'. That seems more about self-gratification than about saying something about a game and yourself.

 

But if everyone disagrees, I'll just have to put my foot down and threaten to leave these forums. Think of the post count we'll lose! (It really is no problem, no one has to follow any arbitrary rules.)

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