What are your favorite video games of all time?

Kenadian

Staff member
Site Admin
What game or games are your favorite of all time? What is it about these games that made them clearly stand above the rest?

Your response can be about 1 game or even several games either current or in the past.
 

Kenadian

Staff member
Site Admin
I guess I'll start then :)

It's too difficult to label one game a clear favorite as there have been so many good games but these are the ones that stand out in my mind:

Battlefield 1942: Back in it's day, Battlefield 1942 was one of the most ground braking games we'd ever seen as gamers. It was very approachable, easy to play and an absolute blast online particularly with friends.

On it's own merits maybe it shouldn't' be on this list but if it weren't for Battlefield 1942 I'd not have made many of the friendships I maintain even this day at B2O. In actual fact if it weren't for Battlefield 1942 it's quite likely Band of Others would never have existed.

Operation Flashpoint (Bohemia Interactive): The Operation Flashpoint you may be familiar with today is not where the game got it's roots. Originally Operation Flashpoint was created by the Developers of the Armed Assault Series and was Published by Codemasters.

When Bohemia Interactive decided to drop Codemasters in favor of self publishing they could not secure the Operation Flashpoint name and thus OFP became ArmA.

The original Operation Flashpoint was years ahead of its time. It was a beautiful game given how large the landscape was and had an excellent (and very diverse) campaign.

I credit the original Operation Flashpoint as the key game that determined what kind of gamer I'd become. Thanks to OFP I've learned that I'm primarily a Simulation Gamer and mostly stick with Simulations or games that have some semblance of simulation in them.

Blade of Darkness: This game was truly amazing, really. It was the very first simple hack and slash game I'd ever played.

I was big into Conan at the time and this game let me play as a character inspired by Conan. It's the fist game I'd ever hacked an Orc's arm off and beat him to death with it.

You could hack off just about anything in this game and either throw it or beat something to death with it.

Having said that, it felt adult in nature but grounded. It provided lore very similar to that of Conan with beautiful environments and powerful music.

It felt like an Epic Adventure.

The best part is you could replay the game as any one of 4 different character roles.

Max Payne: The first Max Payne was really a work of art. It started off with a bang as Max's family is executed by thugs high on a new designer drug called Valkyr.

As a reasonably new father myself it was bone chilling to re-live those moments where his baby was silenced by a bullet in drugged and near-death sequences later in the game.

The story was great, the music was great, the pacing was excellent and bullet time, WOW!

Doom 3: I remember playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein and being struck by how easily the game transitioned from humor to horror. Listening to a few Germans discuss a leak in a damn or where in the hell can he find his bl00dy torque wrench were literally side-splitters.

Then you end up in the Catacombs under the Castle itself and that's when horror took over. It was gruesome, it was tense and it was what made me a fan of ID horror.

I remember John Carmack interviews early in the development process of Doom 3 and he stated the game would be all about single player horror.

It was indeed! Doom 3 did horror perfectly, it wasn't an all out assault on your senses. Instead they timed the horror well even using quiet (which was rare in the game) to stir your unease.

To this day Doom 3 is the only game that has ever surprised me so deeply that I leaped from my Computer chair breaking my desk and keyboard in the process.

The Witcher Series: Although I wasn't taken in by The Witcher 2, the first and 3rd installments in that Series has been amazing.

The Witcher Series was my first real go at RPG's and it took what I'd seen in Blade of Darkness to a whole new level.

I was expecting hack and slash and maybe some story but instead I was introduced to combat that only served to move the story forward, it was not the focal point.

The environments were some of the most diverse I'd ever seen ranging from breathtaking beauty to barren and seemingly dark, dead, foreboding wastelands.

Even swamps carried this environmental diversity.

What I felt (and still feel) The Witcher does better than anyone else is mix what I'd consider authenticity with fantasy in a highly artistic and believably grounded manner.

The Last of Us: The Last of Us is the only game on this list that I think is demeaning to refer to as a game. I believe The Last of Us transcends the word game and encroaches on Art.

It is the only game I've ever played where it's clear how precious a gift life truly is. It also breaks us down as humans and presents us at our most basic levels. The classes are surprisingly simple yet divided by another class, the infected.

The way the Last of Us presents Man is divided into Predator and Prey. Man is both the savior and the enemy and oddly enough the struggle between good and bad is divided by the infected.

The infected are scary to us and meant to be dealt with swiftly and decisively but they are predictable at the core. Man ends up being the shape shifting evil in The Last of Us and intentions are never known until the very end.

I've enjoyed a lot of games in my time but have never labelled anything but The Last of Us as a must play title by everyone. If you pay attention, there is something in it for everybody.

A true masterpiece!
 

Kenadian

Staff member
Site Admin
I'm not ignoring it, I just don't know where to start!
Just start at the beginning my friend.

All I did was run through the games that provided the most memorable experience from the first game to The Last (of Us). :)
 

Jerad

TS3 SA
Jesus Duke, you couldn't leave this more open ended could you.

If I had to boil down to a single game that I've probably sunk more hours into than any other and gotten more enjoyment out of than any other, it would easily be Minecraft. I am almost glad it is not on steam because I've dumped probably well into the thousands of hours into the damn game, mostly into the modded minecraft stuff. It's a game that lets me just chill and do whatever I feel like doing it's not something that requires a great deal of effort or focus if I don't have it and I can just tinker around and build stuff.


Other notable games that make the best/most memorable of all time for me would be (in no particular order):

Kerbal Space Program - I mean, you build spaceships and launch them into space, and sometimes nowhere in particular, sometimes you try to hit planets. They added career mode but really sandbox is really where the game shines. The monstrosities are endless as apparent by just looking in the ksp subreddit. I have nearly 700 hours in the game and that’s only while it's been on steam. I am sure you could nearly double that number with the hours spent playing the early access game.

Counter-Strike - Not much depth here, but it really was my gateway drug to PC gaming. I would get together with a bunch of my friends in someone's parents basement for a lan party every time a new beta release would come out for this game. I would say it is responsible for me meeting some great people while in high school.

TES 3: Morrowind - I don't think Bethesda can ever make a game that had me in such awe as Morrowind did. It is probably the first open world RPG I ever played and had so many little secrets and quirks to it I easily sunk hundreds of hours into the game exploring, crafting questing ect. I actually don't think I even finished the main quest line I kind of wandered off from it and forgot it existed.

Diablo 2 - I missed out on the Diablo 1 train and Diablo 2 was my first. All I can say is holy shit that game was an amazing grind fest in its day. Not much else to say, log in, genocide some monsters, rinse, repeat.

Colin McRae Rally 2.0 - I honestly have no idea why I ever got this game. I really didn't have much of a clue about racing or the differences between Rally and Road series racing at the time but it cemented my love for racing right then. I started searching for and downloading every bit of rally I could at the time it was so much fun with my old Logitech wingman rumble pad.

GTA Vice City - Basically GTA Scarface but the only GTA that I played just for the story, most others I end up fucking around for hours on end but this game I wanted to play for the story. Probably one of the first games I really played through just for the story.

Max Payne - I pretty much can only echo everything Duke mentioned. The game had me pulled in emotionally and I distinctly remember the dream scenes (levels?) while simple had me just spinning.

Arcanum - Arcanum is something I wish could be resurrected with a sequel or a re-mastered edition because it was an amazing RPG for its day. The conflict and balance between Magic and Technology was an amazing idea that fit beautifully in a fantasy steampunk world (I had no idea what steampunk was until many years later). I would argue that it is possibly the best RPG to date.

God damn this list got long, and if I spent more time it could definitely be much longer. Just thinking about the games I've played and my favorites got me all nostalgic, nowadays it feels like everyone’s rushing to the new shiny thing all the time that some things get left forgotten.
 

Daunt

MLG Pro
TES 3: Morrowind - I don't think Bethesda can ever make a game that had me in such awe as Morrowind did. It is probably the first open world RPG I ever played and had so many little secrets and quirks to it I easily sunk hundreds of hours into the game exploring, crafting questing ect. I actually don't think I even finished the main quest line I kind of wandered off from it and forgot it existed.
Couldn't agree more with this. Morrowind will probably be my all time great, especially for a lot of the reasons you listed. Nicely done.
 

tmtm

Admin
Well, I think I have to throw out games like the original Legend of Zelda, or Metroid that featured young (and handsome) me hand-drawing maps of the game world on graph paper...

Team Fortress 2 and Minecraft are two games I have returned to again and again for different reasons. TF2 is a mastery of team-based shooting that somehow managed to keep innovating years after release. Minecraft is probably the ultimate "zone out, relax and lose yourself" game.

Battlefield 1942 -
No surprise here. I can't begin to count how many hours of my life have been lost to this game. A model of depth through simplicity and rock-paper-scissors balance. A near-perfect shooter.

More to come...
 

little P

Super Mod
I've thought a lot about this since you posted it Duke and if I was to give a truly in-depth answer it would be way too long. So the short version it is.

My entire Amiga 500+ collection will always be my first love as it was my first gaming computer, my first proper gaming system actually. Before that I only had my Gameboy. Too many games to list there. I also adored my Super Nintendo, and my Dreamcast. I've owned pretty much every system released (everything from the Sega Mastersystem and Megadrive to the Xbox, 360 and One, PS1, 2, 3 and 4 etc. etc.) bar the Neo Geo (which I really wanted but couldn't get hold of for love nor money in the UK at the time) and there are just too many games to mention.

I suppose if I had to narrow it down to top three post-PC era it would have to be Battlefield 1942 first, as it introduced me to the idea a community can form around a game. It felt like going back to school where you would see your mates every day and have a laugh, and looking back it was from a time where there was no reason to play other than it was so damn fun. No XP, no unlocks, no season pass. Just playing for playing's sake. God I miss that era.

Second mention would be Skyrim, I loved that game, and played through the main story three times on different systems, most recently the PC. It still amazes me to this day and once the modding community got hold of it I don't think that game could ever get old. I've never been more immersed in a game than when I was playing Skyrim (1st person obviously).

Now the third mention was really tough to call, so many titles could have taken this spot but I decided on Rocket League (sorry GTA, close but no cigar). No other game have I played for this long (bar BF1942), and again, you unlock everything in the game really early so there is no other reason to play other than playing itself, for fun. Even now, with 500 hours played between PC and Xbox One versions I still have things to learn, and ways to improve. It has every kind of emotion you experience playing competitive sports in real life - elation, satisfaction, hope, despair, disappointment, joy, anger, team spirit, pride, shame, euphoria and so much more, all wrapped up in 5-10 minute chunks. I absolutely love it not just because of the gameplay but because of the psychological aspects too.

I had to narrow it down to three otherwise I'd be waffling for hours.

Honourable mentions go to the GTA series, Gears of War (the first - and best one), Forza Motorsport, Worms, Trials HD, Minecraft, and especially Street Fighter 2 Turbo World Championship edition - which got me through a particularly tough time in my childhood where I suffered a huge loss in my family and was staying with my grandparents for summer holidays. A guy next door who was friends of my Grandparents had a SNES and we would play best of three rounds, best of ten matches between Ryu and Ken. Whoever won that best of ten got to keep the SF2 limited edition badge he had until we played the next match, which was most days of the six weeks. He never let me win, and I had to really try hard just to win a round, let alone a match. Thinking back he probably let me win that first match (after two weeks of trying) but made it seem like I genuinely did it I suppose (I was kicking his ass by the fourth week though). He really helped me through that devastating time, also letting me help out on his milk round to earn some cash and teach me a few hard truths about life that I will never forget and still live by this day. Nobody really knows that, in fact that's the first time I've told anyone so there ya go. I could hit the delete button I suppose but it feels good to get that out. Street Fighter 2 (and a kind neighbour) saved my life - literally. I've not proof read this post so if it's drivel I'm sorry o_O
 
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I'll keep it simple as I feel explanations are not needed unless requested...that and I am a charter member of B.ad T.ypsists U.ntied.
In no apparent order. Though the first two ARE the first two:
BF1942 (As well as the Forgotten Hope Mod which was simply the best realisation of this game that ever has existed)
Homeworld
Master of Orion
Age of Empires, Age of Empires 2
Mechwarrior 1, 2, 3 and Mercenaries
Witcher 3
SKYRIMMMMMMM!
Jane`s WW2 Fighter
IL2 Sturmovik
World of Warcraft
Half Life, Half Life 2!!!!!!
F1 2014
Quake 2
DOOM (the original)
 

Engnr

Moderator
BF 1942, hands down the best experience. You could do anything you wanted, play anyway you wanted. There is just nothing like that game. Many long time friends were made. The beta demo released for free was the best.

Doom multiplayer changed it all. We set up a 4 person net game at work one night, that was my first experience with multiplayer, it changed it all. I have a damn hard time playing single player games any longer.
 

Jezebel

Core
Doom - The first real adrenaline pumper for me.

Forgotten Hope - worth all the deaths to shoot Eng in the head or hit and run with a Willy Jeep.

VCO - My first MMO and where I met some great friends (barf)

GTA Series - Nothing better than bludgeoning someone to death with a massive black dildo. Also where I found my love for American muscle.

Warhammer Online - Shame the balance issues and mass battle server lag killed it. That game was the shit.
 

Brainling

Hardcore
Metroid - I'm a Metroid fanatic. I have dumped over a thousand hours of my life in to various Metroid games, from the original, to Super, to Zero Mission, to Prime, you name it, I've Samused it.

Mass Effect - I don't care what people say about the third game and some of it's flaws (and it did have some), this to me is the defining game trilogy of the modern era.

Souls Series - Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, I love them all. I've put hundreds of hours in to the Souls games.

Flight Sims - The modern era being DCS and Falcon BMS for me, but I've been in to flight sims for a long time. Since Falcon 3.0.
 

ethanolmos

Casual
Among all the games the most thoughtful, interesting for me is Star WarsKOTOR. Every single character is unique and interesting, the plot is intriguing and full of questions. And deep philosophy underlying the story.
The second favorite game is probably Morrowind. Yes, it's horrible old and all that stuff, but vibe it possesses is unique.
And the hobby of mine, so to say, older age is slot gaming. Yes, you can call it casual, stupid, addictive and cancerous. But, you know, I just like it more than any entertainment internet\computer stuff could provide. All the games insta casino provides are amazing. And if you have a head on your shoulders you won't lose much money. The thing in slots to me is this risk, you know when the game actually enters your world and could mess up your resources and live if you lose it. It's kinda virtual reality which transforms its nature to become actual reality or something. And the thing you actually playing against is your dark urges and your shadow.

Admin Note: We do not promote gambling at Band of Others so please refrain from linking to any online betting site.

Thank you.
 
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M4ST3RB4T3S

Casual
Goldeneye 64, I played many and many hours with friends on a little 27'' monitor split into 4, it was the good old time.

Big fan of the .hack// gu serie on ps2 played all the games.
 

Findstone

Casual
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - I started playing the first person shooter in the early betas 1999. Since then I never turned my back against the game anymore. Today the game is still updated from time to time with new textures and map changes. It's a great team game with realistic weapons and player models and it's even possible to bet money on your favorit cs:go team as you can see on [LINK REDACTED BY EV] Whoever hasn't played it yet should definitely try it.

Refrain from posting links to betting related sites, and stop editing your messages to circumvent the spam policy consider this a last warning - ElektroVodka
 

francisbaud

Casual
Knight Online: my first MMORPG, the first time I experience massive battles with dozens of other players. Lot of grind too but with the relaxing music it's less annoying.

Guild Wars: the storyline was excellent and the coop plays were fun. Lot of exploration. I enjoyed to farm obsidians with my 55HP. PvP was thrilling in arenas.
 

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