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!