Zeusthecat

Favorite Game Of All Time

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I'm going to be cliched and pick Grim Fandango.  I had played many adventure games before, but this one was the first one (that I had played) with any narrative oomph behind it. There were just so many creative ideas here - it felt like the last time for a long while that there was a major effort to drive the adventure game genre forward.  (I'm still not sure I can think of another good example, though Phoenix Wright might come close.)

 

I'll shut up now, because it's not like anyone in this forum needs convincing of its greatness.

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I gotta chime in and show some love for WoW as well. I played for about 2 years during WotLK and Cataclysm but ended up eventually getting bored with the direction they were taking things (smaller raids, too much of a focus on single player content).

 

There was awhile there where I was completely enthralled by the world (of warcraft) and spent countless hours reading up on all the lore. After the raiding scene died down in Cataclysm I kept myself occupied by just trying to explore everything in the world and do random quests that I had missed. I was one of those weird people that actually liked reading mountains of in-game text and found that it enriched the world for me.

 

Few games have been able to top the experience WoW provided of living in and exploring such a huge and detailed world. I miss it but I also know that I will probably never go back.

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I gotta chime in and show some love for WoW as well. I played for about 2 years during WotLK and Cataclysm but ended up eventually getting bored with the direction they were taking things (smaller raids, too much of a focus on single player content).

 

There was awhile there where I was completely enthralled by the world (of warcraft) and spent countless hours reading up on all the lore. After the raiding scene died down in Cataclysm I kept myself occupied by just trying to explore everything in the world and do random quests that I had missed. I was one of those weird people that actually liked reading mountains of in-game text and found that it enriched the world for me.

 

Few games have been able to top the experience WoW provided of living in and exploring such a huge and detailed world. I miss it but I also know that I will probably never go back.

I also gotta chime in and say I agree with this completely in every way. The only thing I'd add is that I also loooooved the PvP in vanilla WoW (in that there actually was world PvP), and disliked the direction they took it as time went on (ARENAS). So, basically the same thing as your raiding issue. 

 

Man did I love World of Warcraft.

 

Also I have to be completely honest: if all my friends jumped back in, I probably would, too, at least for a month or two. They won't, though, so I've got nothing to worry about. Phew!

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I was surprised that no one had mentioned WoW any earlier in this discussion tbh. Karazahn is probably one of the best experiences I've ever had in any game. The boss fights were so interesting and unique, compared to the MC fights where bosses (and trash mobs) literally had the same skins etc. It was the first instance where I really felt we were actually going exploring and adventuring, rather than just trash, trash, boss, trash, trash, boss. The Chess boss and the Theatre boss(es) stand out in particular. 

 

Zeus, while I never read much of the lore and was definitely guilty of skipping every quest log text wall, I still found the world itself really interesting. The cities (well the good ones e.g. SW and Ogg) had so much character. And I totally sympathise with the idea of never going back again, it's just not what it used to be, as much as that makes me sound like a crotchety old man. They literally have made the game way more accessible (as in there's no more attunement quests, no Pala/Lock mount quests, Hunter Legendary weapon quests AFAIK), and oddly those obtuse, esoteric quest lines just made the game more compelling. There was a real sense of toughing it out, and a tangible idea of risk vs. reward that I just don't find in the game anymore. 

 

Twig, I remember grinding for gold at Tyr's Hand pre-TBC and the world PVP there was fantastic. Although there was a really bad Alliance to Horde ratio, in which Horde outweighed us like 3:1 or something. We changed servers when there was a merger and got a bit better, but then Nihilim/SK Gaming (one of the world's best raiding guilds, or at least in the EU) moved over and so a lot of other Horde guilds followed too. It was still fun seeing "famous" WoW players and beating them in Arenas. Also, most of my friends have gotten back into it and I simply refuse to. It's like heroin to me, I had an hours played count of around 4,000 hours across all my accounts/characters, although admittedly a lot of that was spent AFK etc. 

 

P.S: If any of you were guilty of watching machinima I met the guy that made Tales of The Past, and it was actually his cousin that got me into WoW in the first place. 

 

P.P.S: I tested my brother on his map knowledge of WoW and these were the results - http://vaultinhabitant.tumblr.com/post/53462518181/i-tested-my-brother-on-his-map-knowledge-of-world

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 ...oddly those obtuse, esoteric quest lines just made the game more compelling.

 

I 100% agree. While the slightly more bombastic main story quests were usually the most interesting from a mechanical perspective, the quests you are talking about were what kept me so engaged in the world after all the good multiplayer stuff started to decline. I was always amazed at how interconnected every npc in the world was. I would often do a little series of obscure quests and then come to find out that the characters involved in that questline were at one point very significant within the lore and had had major interactions with main characters in the past. I can't put my finger on it but it just made the game feel special. It gave it a sense of history in a way and made the game feel less static than it really was. I loved the process of going to a generic abandoned stronghold for a fetch quest and then finding out through the quest or through a wiki that that seemingly generic stronghold was the site of some major event that had happened in the past. Then whenever I would go back and see the crumbling architecture and broken crates knowing the history of that location, it just felt special.

 

Man, this is some serious nostalgia.

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The nostalgic part of my brain is screaming at me to say Battlezone by Pandemic/Activision.

 

A FPS/RTS hybrid from '98, the player takes on the role of a combat pilot during the war between USA and Soviet in 1960... in space.

The premise of the game is that a new form of metal, Biometal, has been found in remnants of comets on earth. This new material skyrockets technological innovation and the two superpowers race off into space to find more of this precious metal.

 

There are two campaigns, in one of which you play as a pilot for the NSDF (the military arm of NASA) and one for the CCA (Soviet Cosmic Colonist Army) in which you visit several of the planetary bodies in our solar system.

 

Besides the gameplay being tremendous, the setting in this game is just genius in my mind. Taking two factions that most people have some kind of relation to or knowledge about and pitting them against each other in our own solar system, our own backyard, gives a sense of connection which is so often lacking in space games. However since we can't have nice things they of course go and screw it up in the sequel where all humans are united against an alien threat on alien planets.

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Monkey Island 2: Le Chuck's Revenge would have to take the cake. It's just impossibly before its time. There still does not exist as good a combination of hilarious and thoughtful storytelling, difficult but satisfying and original puzzles, sweet ass tunes and incredible 2D art.

Also, Thief: The Dark Project and Super Mario 64.

Actually I'm going to fix this, one reason I replied to this thread is that Minecraft displaced Mario for me in my top 3. Not unlike the O.P., somewhere between my lava moated Ice Fortress with attendant tentacles of exploratory mining leading to The Extended Nether Adventures, and exploring Stevan's museum on idle thumbs world 2 or 3 (?), Minecraft blew enough fuses in my head to topple even Mario.

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Actually I'm going to fix this, one reason I replied to this thread is that Minecraft displaced Mario for me in my top 3. Not unlike the O.P., somewhere between my lava moated Ice Fortress with attendant tentacles of exploratory mining leading to The Extended Nether Adventures, and exploring Stevan's museum on idle thumbs world 2 or 3 (?), Minecraft blew enough fuses in my head to topple even Mario.

 

Thank you! I was hoping someone else would at least give an honorable mention to my F-GOAT.

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Doing Dire Maul Ogre King runs on my shaman until I finally got that bloody staff is one of my more enduring Hideo Game memories for sure. Running a casual guild without raiding and then getting best-in-slot non-raiding gear was a very interesting time.

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The Dream Machine, Team Fortress 2, Kentucky Route Zero, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Deus Ex, Red Dead Redemption and Enslaved

 

These are good games that can be, at times, really flawed, but they do some things so wonderful and unique that they remain favourites.

 

For example, while RDR nails mood and tone, its narrative is a huge mess and bloats out in order to create a large 'epic' game experience. The individual stories and side missions, however, were spot on, especially when it starts channeling The Blood Meridian. 

 

Enslaved has some mechanical issues, but has the best characterisation I have seen in a video game. People should play Enslaved, and it is a shame it didn't come out on PC.

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Enslaved

 

Enslaved has some mechanical issues, but has the best characterisation I have seen in a video game. People should play Enslaved, and it is a shame it didn't come out on PC.

 

That's an interesting choice.  I played it a bit myself but never finished it.  I'm curious, what about the characterisation did you like so much?

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I honestly think the bond between the two characters is so much more natural and meaningful than any other game. I love how empathy was created (like the tragic fish scene), and how the ending (which plays upon an old philosophical thought experiment) tests the experiences of the entire game and the limits of the friendship.

Also, the dialogue wasn't corny and the game didn't rely on any tropes so it is already better than most video games.

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The nostalgic part of my brain is screaming at me to say Battlezone by Pandemic/Activision.

 

A FPS/RTS hybrid from '98, the player takes on the role of a combat pilot during the war between USA and Soviet in 1960... in space.

The premise of the game is that a new form of metal, Biometal, has been found in remnants of comets on earth. This new material skyrockets technological innovation and the two superpowers race off into space to find more of this precious metal.

 

There are two campaigns, in one of which you play as a pilot for the NSDF (the military arm of NASA) and one for the CCA (Soviet Cosmic Colonist Army) in which you visit several of the planetary bodies in our solar system.

 

Besides the gameplay being tremendous, the setting in this game is just genius in my mind. Taking two factions that most people have some kind of relation to or knowledge about and pitting them against each other in our own solar system, our own backyard, gives a sense of connection which is so often lacking in space games. However since we can't have nice things they of course go and screw it up in the sequel where all humans are united against an alien threat on alien planets.

 

I think Battlezone is one of the most underappreciated games i've ever played, just a tremendous thing.

 

Just loaded with cool little mechanics and systems, like bailing out of a nearly destroyed vehicle, sniping through the cockpit of whatever nearly killed you, and hijacking that vehicle instead. So it's a great vehicle action game which also happens to be fully-featured, base-building, drag-select kind of RTS, with both aspects seamlessly integrated into eachother.

 

There were a lot of really weird, experimental takes on RTS's back then. Did anybody ever play Uprising?

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I honestly think the bond between the two characters is so much more natural and meaningful than any other game. I love how empathy was created (like the tragic fish scene), and how the ending (which plays upon an old philosophical thought experiment) tests the experiences of the entire game and the limits of the friendship.

Also, the dialogue wasn't corny and the game didn't rely on any tropes so it is already better than most video games.

 

I think that's a really interesting perspective.  I didn't quite view it that way because of my familiarity with the source material the game is based on.  I suppose that I was looking at it as a modern remake, so in my mind the characters were building upon that base, which probably lessened the impact you were talking about.

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Doing Dire Maul Ogre King runs on my shaman until I finally got that bloody staff is one of my more enduring Hideo Game memories for sure. Running a casual guild without raiding and then getting best-in-slot non-raiding gear was a very interesting time.

Dire Maul... poor you. Coincidentally, Dire Maul was the first server I played WoW on. My friends and I ran a casual raiding guild called <The Imba Party> that ended up clearing Kharazhan two weeks after it was formed, quicker than <Exorcism>, a guild I'd spent 2 years with. I also love how WoW had the ability to just have these areas and environments that hold all these personal little stories for you and your friends, the time you were ganked here and the time you 3v1'd a bunch of guys there. Fantastic. Emergent narrative personal story creation relevant player-driven funness. 

 

I also just remembered that a friend has (I'm assuming) the only Warlock pet Imp in the world to literally be called "Imp" as he convinced a Game Master to change it and then the GM couldn't figure out how to change it back so he just left it and kind of ran away. 

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Oh, don't take me wrong, I enjoyed the heck out of it. It was such an arcane, weird experience, and then doing it frequently enough for it to become mundane was an interesting thing by and of itself. DM also is one of the cooler dungeons in general in my opinion with all the differently-messed-up wings.

 

Dire Maul... poor you. 

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It has to be Freelancer for me, the wide expanse of systems and the first time a game has reacted to my actions. The story was awesome and I think I have completed it four times. Looking back on it now, from previews, it seemed like it was going to be way more player influenced. But It is still a good achievement for the time (2003). The graphics hold up relatively well and doesn't need any mods to get it operational.

 

The three runners up would be:

1.Test Drive unlimited - I have never seen a island modelled for driving before and the amount of cars and houses you could buy was great, Also the passive MMO aspect was cool too.

2.Kotor 2 - The star wars game that made me feel lost and alone in a huge universe. I loved the dark turn on star wars that you rarely get to see.

3.World of Warcraft - Just the exploration and loot aspect kept me going to lvl 63.

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