Joegreenbeen said
Why all the hate on Spore?

Earlier in development Spore was absolutely mind blowing. It would have been an amazing game if they hadn't slapped googly eyes on everything and turned it into a cartoon.

Oh man, tough question. Ask me on a different day and you'd get a different answer as I remembered some other game I used to play 'til my eyes bled. Still, I'll try. To amalgamate all the different criteria - fun, replayability, content, nostalgia value, etc. - I'll go with what Toellner did and judge them by effect on my life crossed with my objective evaluation of how masterful they are. I'll also need a different reason for every game I pick - so I won't just have ten games that I love for the same damn reason. Star Wars: Battlefront isn't there because Halo is, let's put it that way.

Sable said
Earlier in development Spore was absolutely mind blowing. It would have been an amazing game if they hadn't slapped googly eyes on everything and turned it into a cartoon.

So you think it is bad because of the graphics?

Calling a game bad for graphics is bad. Minecraft's graphics are terrible(it's rendering engine ain't amazing either.) Yet, it was worth 2.5 billion dollars.

10-Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3
9-Little King’s Story
8-Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
7-Fallout: New Vegas
6-Pikmin 2
5-Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
4-XCOM: Enemy Within
3-Dark Souls
2-Saints Row 2
1-Fable 2

Joegreenbeen said
So you think it is bad because of the graphics?

It's not the graphics. It's the style. Different things.

Interesting picks. Though it dawns on me I probably should have also done a list based on how game's personally affected me.
My OP list was simply based on how fun I found them to be as games, and how strong a narrative they may have had. In other words, trying to take personal bias of "It did this for me, therefore I think it's one of the best games".

Anyways, list if the criteria is how it affected me personally.

10. Phantasy Star Universe

9. Spore

8. Fallout 3

7. Dark Souls

6. Wolfenstein 3D

5. XCOM Enemy Unknown

4. The Walking Dead Series

3. Halo 3

2. Kotor 1

1. Mass Effect Trilogy

1. Kings Cup
2. Flip cup
3. Battle Ball
4. Cards against humanity
5. Boxer or Briefs
6. Pictionary
7. Red-light, green-light
8. That one game where you divide everyone into two teams, and you pass around that little thing that says a word, and you have to act out the word.
9. Grab ass
10. Far cry 3

#10: Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. A decent singleplayer, an expansion that added heaping meats of content, and endless custom scenarios for you to play for quite literally years. This game was so fantastic it spawned an entire genre. Failing to put this on your list indicates you had no childhood involving PC gaming. And that's a shame.

#9: Freelancer. A purely personal pick, but I grew up with this game and often played it with my family. We'd make trade convoys and run from Bretonia to Liberty. The scariest run was always doing a drug run from Kusari space, across Liberty, into Rheinland. Because you'd always have that one patrol come wandering into the ice field, and someone would have to go and play the lame horse and possible get killed so the others could bullrush the drugs and make retarded sums of money. It was one of the only space simulators I played where I felt like I was legitimately exploring entire solar systems, landing on planets, and had a multitude of options as to what to do with my time: Trade, Fight, Become a Pirate or a Bounty Hunter... The choice was yours.

It also had some pretty baller role play servers. Nothing like going in a fleet patrol and seeing your battleship get hit with torpedoes in the nebulae...

#8: Jade Empire. Bioware RPG's often didn't tread far from established tropes and stereotypes, and while KOTOR and Baldur's Gate are solid games, the combat in both of them aged extraordinarily poorly. This one however, aged well, like a fine wine with a simple but effective combat system and a universe that delves into eastern mythology. With flavourful characters and an utterly beautiful world, it is honestly hard not to fall in love with this title, one of Bioware's classics, and one of their best. In my personal opinion, it is their best.

#7: Rome: Total War. A game of incredible depth and complexity, where every faction played uniquely against one another in a perfect sense of asymmetrical combat. Starcraft had three factions that did this. Rome: Total War did this with sixteen factions and somehow managed to do it in a remarkable balanced manner. The multiplayer was addicting and extremely entertaining. The only thing that holds this game back from being even higher on this list is the AI, which has never been truly fantastic in Total War save Shogun 2. Still... That music is fantastic.

#6: X-COM: Apocalypse. Many would go to the original and proclaim it the best but this one had pause-able real time combat right alongside the turn based mechanics. It was just as difficult, and refined the formula the original set out with, balancing the difficulty curve so it didn't instantly wreck you and even taking an attempt at balancing psionics. There were certain small details that shined through as well: Like brainsuckers that got a robotic unit would simply die and the robot wouldn't notice what happened as it reported back to duty for you. And, again, an incredible soundtrack that still sends chills down my spine. Seriously, give it a listen, it is genuinely chilling and is one of the best soundtracks put into any game. The new X-Com is admirable, but extremely simplified. This one is the best of the series, though the user interface is dated and hard to understand if you haven't used it before, hampering it from going higher on this list despite eating countless hours of my childhood.

#5: Mario 64/Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I have a hard time deciding which of these Nintendo 64 staples is 'superior' to the other but I grew up with this console and I adored it, and these two games made that console worth owning. They both have good soundtracks, they both have entertaining premises, they will both eat hundreds of hours of your time and leave you with several fond childhood memories.

#4: Morrowind. Skyrim gets an honourable mention, but Morrowind really just sucker punches it for having spears, and not holding my hand like a lost orphan child. It straight up will grind you into a fine powder and throw you into the wind if you tread in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone can die, and the game means it--even plot important NPC's can bite the bullet and die. Siding with one faction can and does put you at odds with others--no more being a member of the thieves guild and assassins guild and fighters guild and mage's guild all at the same time and becoming grandmaster sensei rank in all of them. The only thing Skyrim beats Morrowind on is the combat system. In Morrowind you can miss a person right in front of you because the Dice Gods feel like pissing in your cereal. Which, naturally, stops it from going into the top three. Other than that, fantastic game.

#3: Thief 1 & 2: Garret is the best thief of all time. Thief is the best stealth game of all time. Anyone who has played this will understand what I mean when I say that the stupid tree forest with the mechanical treants in the hammer pagan temple still leaves me unsettled and jittery. The atmosphere is thick and rich and the game is as hard as you want it to be. The soundtrack, what little there is to say of it, is solid, the sound engine is amazing, the guards are hilarious, Garret is complex and all sorts of witty and wonderful... This is a game I can consistently come back to and I immediately know its every crevice, knook, and cranny. At the very least it's better than Assassin's Creed. Dishonored gets a special mention for being an obvious spiritual successor to the Thief franchise, and a worthy one at that.

#2: Star Trek: Starfleet Command. A complex yet easily accessible space tactical game where you manage the power of your ship to shields, rearrange shield power on multiple fronts, can overload your torpedoes, send suicide shuttles at Klingons, stop alien devices from eating planets, fight the Gorn, and play peek-a-boo with Romulans around a mother!@#$ing black hole. I have so many good memories about this game. Like one time I was stuck orbiting a black hole, I was slowly slipping in until I got my engineer to focus all the power he had and all the repair resources he had into the engines while the enemy fired everything he had to try and stop me. I managed to escape as he fell into the black hole.

I'm serious this is honestly probably the single best attempt to get Star Trek into a game and they nailed it. 10/10.

#1: The only strategy game to make me cry when I failed to protect the homeworld I spent so much time searching for in the original... Then gave me a fleet of warships in real time 3-dimensional space and told me who I should gut for revenge.

This is also the only strategy game I know where you don't want to lose ships because you can scrap them to build different ships. Meaning that a primary method of resource acquisition was to scavenge parts from destroyed battleships and to capture and dismantle enemy frigates. This meant that combat was just as much a game of preserving precious supply lines as it was protecting your mothership, and due to limited line of sight, it was very much a game of hide and seek. You could even tell the clever commanders apart from the infantile ones: The clever commanders knew to send their ships underneath the enemy, because the enemy ships would have to rotate downward to counter-attack and lower armour plating was weakest.

It's the only strategy game to fully incorporate three dimensional warfare and truly nail it. It's the only strategy game to make me honestly cry and feel a true seething hatred for the enemy. It's the only strategy game I know that has heavy arabic themes instead of your stereotypical western atmosphere.

It's Homeworld 2. One of the greatest games of all time.

Shout-Outs
Pokemon. C'mon everybody has played this. A lot still do. I still have my copy of Pokemon Yellow around here somewhere...
The Sims. Yes, I know, it's a retarded game, and we all pirate the shit out of it because it's massively overpriced. But you know what? Best pool drowning simulator of all time. Drown you little bastards. Who is your God now, Gregory?!
The Tycoon Series of games: There's probably a Tycoon game for everyone. Mine is Railroad Tycoon. Choo choo!
Valve Games: Portal, Left4Dead, Half-Life, and an engine that has spawned countless entertaining cheap products for me to consume. And Steam. All Hail the Gaben, Lord God Emperor of the Sales.
Mortal Kombat. "FINISH HIM!"
Soul Calibur. I wonder if they just left the typo in the last name intentionally or if they just had to roll with it.
And countless other games I am probably forgetting at this moment.

I like Deus Ex HR. :3

Aragorn said
Calling a game bad for graphics is bad. Minecraft's graphics are terrible(it's rendering engine ain't amazing either.) Yet, it was worth 2.5 billion dollars.

I thought it was Mojang that was worth 2.5 Billion, not Minecraft alone?

HollywoodMole said
I thought it was Mojang that was worth 2.5 Billion, not Minecraft alone?

They sure as hell didn't get bought for Cobalt or Scrolls.

I'll go countdown style, because reasons. Also I won't include multiple entries from one series because that's lame. I'll just throw my favorite from a given series in the slot where it belongs, and any others I feel like talking about will go in the honorable mentions area.

10. Bastion - The game play is pretty solid, but Bastion's atmosphere is what really drew me in. The narrator and the soundtrack took it from being just a good action RPG to an amazing experience. The story is also pretty good, and though there are only a few named characters at all it managed to pull me in enough to feel attached to them all, and that's something I can't say about the majority of even the games on this very list.

9. Warcraft 3 - This was a mainstay of my childhood, and it's still a great game today. The single player campaigns (particularly with the Frozen Throne expansion, loved the whole founding of the Horde campaign thing) were great both in game play and in the story, and that's where I spent most of my time playing this game. I delved into some of the online stuff, but I was a shitter and sucked at competitive play (the slow build turtling I learned against the campaign AI on normal difficulty did not work against anyone who knew what they were doing). Still had tons of fun in the online play anyway, and I wish I still had my original account to be able to check how many hours I played. Pretty sure it had to be over 200, including my multiple plays through the singleplayer campaign.

8. Super Metroid - This was actually the first video game I ever played, though that's not why it's on my list. The combat is simple but solid, the platforming is pretty damned precise, and the exploration aspect is fun rather than infuriating (at least for me, as I know plenty of people who hate this game for how hidden some required equipment upgrades are). I never sunk as many hours into this as with some of the others on my list, but that's only because I got to the point where I could blitz through it in a few hours whenever I felt like replaying it again, and the number of times I've played it through while still enjoying it is probably the main reason it's in my top 10.

7. Illusion of Gaia (called Illusion of Time in Europe and Australia) - A SNES game that most people seem not to have heard of. It's a fun action RPG game with a solid story and cast of characters. Nostalgia is a large reason why I count this game in my top 10, but the game itself still holds up today. It also has the distinction of being the first and almost only video game to ever make me cry, because young Jorick couldn't quite handle some of the shit that went down in the story.

6. Dragon Age: Origins - This was a hard one to place. Played the shit out of it, loved it, but hard to compare to some of the other games on the list. It combined two of my favorite things in games: RPG elements and tactical fighting. It also helped that the story was pretty good shit and the characters were generally well fleshed out. The world itself was kind of the star though, with all the great lore popping up all over the place. It was one of the few games that made the extra reading in books and journal entries and such feel like a worthwhile experience instead of a tedious thing to ignore, and that alone earns some points in my book.

5. Dark Souls 1 & 2 - Already breaking my rule about one entry per series, but fuck it. Both games are pretty equal to me, in that they're both great. I love games that don't hold my hand the whole damned way through and present real challenges for me to overcome, and those two things are Dark Souls in a nutshell. I've spent over 100 hours in each of them separately, and they're still fun to me. That says a lot, considering how I get bored of most games after a couple hours and never bother with them again.

4. Yoshi's Island - It was hard to pick between this one and Super Mario World, but in the end I had to decide that the higher quality game had to win out over the one I had more nostalgia for. Yoshi's Island is the best platformer game I've ever played, bar none, and I rather enjoy platformers so I've played quite a few of them. It'd deserve a top 10 spot just based on how great the game feels to play on a basic level, with jumping that has just the perfect amount of slipping and sliding around to make you feel like you're in control of something with actual weight and momentum behind it, but the other mechanics of shooting eggs and having your life based on keeping baby Mario safe are great additions to the typical "jump over this gap and the next one and so on until the end of the level" formula of platformers. The art style is pretty great too, probably one of the best looking SNES games ever, so bonus points for that.

3. Fallout 1 & 2 - Since I already broke the single entry rule, fuck it, this is another one where it was hard to pick one over the other. Remember that thing I said in the Dragon Age: Origins explanation about loving RPG stuff and tactical fighting? Fallout 1 & 2 had a large hand in getting me to love those things to begin with. Remember that thing I said in the Dark Souls explanation about loving it when games don't hold your hand and instead give you a real challenge? Fallout 1 & 2 were some of the first games that made me work through frustration and difficulty to get to that sweet feeling of victory on the other side. The modern revivals of the series can get right the fuck out of my face with their mindless fighting and how they baby you along to the right path, these two games are what Fallout is all about.

2. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - I've mentioned playing some games on this list for over 200 hours; Morrowind makes those look like jokes. I've played it frequently over the lifespans of two original Xbox systems, two Xbox 360s, and on my computer, and in total I've easily surpassed 1000 hours played in this game, probably closer to 1500. It's kind of disgusting, but it's also so damned good. This was the game that first introduced me to the rich lore of the Elder Scrolls world, and it was my first experience with a truly open world game where you can do damn near anything. It's another one of those games that throws you into the world without much to go on and then tells you to get out there and do shit. It's not so heavy on the challenge side of things, but it more than makes up for that with the freedom and lack of treating the player like a child. The graphics don't really hold up at all, and the combat wasn't all that great, but it was a fantastic experience every step of the way. It really gave that feeling of being an adventurer on an epic quest, along with that ever-present feeling of freedom to do as you please, and that combination is something I've yet to find in another game. If not for those couple flaws I listed, Morrowind would probably be my #1 game.

1. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - This shit right here was my fucking childhood. It was one of the first games I ever played, and I played it for hours and hours and hours a kid. Couldn't even get past the first part of the game and into the Dark World until I was about 10, and didn't actually beat the thing until I was 15, and that felt like the high point of my life for years man. This is one of the very few games I can actually play over again and still enjoy, and I love it every time. It's a fucking masterpiece of game design, and even at its worst points (such as the water and ice dungeons) it's still great. The combat is a perfect example of a simple concept done so well that you don't even need complexity to make it compelling. Everything from the music to the sound effects to the art direction are just fucking wonderful. I cannot think of a single negative thing to say about the game, and that's probably why it's got the top spot of my list locked down. I could go on for many paragraphs about why A Link to the Past is so damned awesome, but I think I'll just cut myself off here instead. I dunno if any other game will ever take this top spot away, because the combination of amazing game and hefty nostalgia is goddamned formidable.

I've played so very few games in my time, that my top ten list is basically a list of all the games I've played in the order of my preference.

This list is likely inaccurate in order, may be better described as listed by internal significance.

5. Spore Creature Creator


4. Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne


3. Shadow of the Colossus


2. Dragon Age: Origins


1. Demon's Souls


Uhhh, that's only five games. I have other games I love, but I guess nowhere near as much? So, honourable mentions:
Star Warfare: Alien Invasion
Tap Tap Revenge 4
Myst
the Walking Dead: Season 1
Uncharted series
Some Ratchet and Clank demo.
A variety of Lego Star Wars games.

And no, I've never played pokémon. Nor Mario. Unless you count Super Smash Bros: Brawl. But even then, I always played as Kirby. ;]

Top 10, sorta, it's hard

01 - City of Heroes / City of Villains

02 - Crusader Kings 2

03 - Jade Empire

04 - Sonic 3 & Knuckles

05 - Dawn of War 1; Winter Assault & Dark Crusade

06 - Persona 4

07 - Papers, Please

08 - Roller-coaster Tycoon 1 & 2

09 - Sims 2 + Expansions

10 - The World Ends with You


Honourable Mentions

Black & White 1
Bioshock 1
Civilization 5
Diablo 2
Harvest Moon 64
Hotline Miami
MarioKart 64
Minecraft
Red Alert 1
Shadow of the Colossus
Super Hexagon
Super Smash Brothers 64
Super Time Force
Tales of Symphonia
Telltale's Walking Dead Season 1
Warcraft 2 & 3

A list is incoming soon(tm).

Alright here we fuckin I hope I can count to fuckin' ten dude.
10. Army of 2: Whatever the fuck
So you guys might notice that I don't actually play a lot of story games in my list. That's because I've always became incredibly bored with every story game ever. Except for the 2 on my list. Army of 2 drew me in because it was literally just me and my best friend slamming ourselves head first into the characters. Anyways, fun partner fight interactions, love having battle where you need to pair up and break apart a lot of times in the same encounter. Good story, slammed through the games in a weekend. We still joke about playing it again sometimes. tenouttaten

9. World of Warcraft -
Fuck this game in every god damn way. Every time I touch it I become addicted. Even if it's just me sitting in goldshire watching the conversations happen. Still good to this day.

8 Trine 2 -
As I said, not very drawn into a lot of story games. Double time for puzzle games. I fucking hate puzzle games. This game is read in the style of an easy to digest childrens story. Combine that with a snarky chick, an oblivious knight, and a slick as fuck failure of a wizard? All sharing the same soul? Sold so hard. Absolutely gorgeous game as well. Two good buddies and I might have spent 20 minutes sitting in front a background furiously fapping.

7 League of Legends -
Oh LOL how I loved you. Probably the only game I ever thought I was one of the top people in a server. I just got incredibly good during season 2. It also got me into the idea of e-sports and playing a game as a career. I think I also learned how to teach people how to do things while I was pulling my 5 stack out of the trenches. Now I don't play this game. Season 3 was dull as shit to me, and my other friends started going "nah". However there is one last person playing, who owes a lot of his skill to me. I think he's still hovering at diamond 1. Really cool shit.

6. Terraria -
Buy.
The.
Soundtrack.
This was the only game other than my #2 slot that could pull me off of League of Legends when I was into it. Great metroidvania style of game. Excellent item progression system. Nice 2D world building. The only flaw with it was probably how it can't push past it's 2D limits. Once you can beat all the fantastic bosses, and can get all the cool items you could want it's not really worth playing anymore. However it's still a game I'll restart every once in a while. And I drop at least a quarter of a year on any major patches. Good all the way through.
Buy
the
soundtrack
seriously
Check it.

5. Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls
Wow I can't believe this is the ARPG that makes it out of all of them. I don't know if I put this here because I've wasted so much time on my characters or just cause I'm impressed by the sheer magnitude of that shithole blizz dug themselves out of. A 180 of the century that's to be sure. Fast game, easy to get into for short bursts. But when you get into the complexities it opens up to a massively complex ARPG that with smoothness that every ARPG player has always wanted. (If this game made babies with POE I might die in a week.)

4. Unreal Tournament 2k4
Oh yeah. Arena Shooters. Fuck me right guys? Anyways
None of you can beat my UT jumping fuck you. I'll lead you all like chickens to a slaughter.
Now if only I had a new age tribes game =\

3. Starcraft 1.5: Broodwar
I think I might be a fan of a certain company. What can you say about starcraft? It jump started e-sports. It crushed all other RTSs out there. To the point where Blizzard owns the RTS genre. It's also a perfect example of why you let your player base muck around with your balance over long periods of time. (Seriously stop fucking with things, Riot). We got to see how strats changed without any balancing work done. (well.... almost)

2 Borderlands 1
Such a great game. Okay I'm first gonna tell you guys how many times my best friend and I played that game all the way through. The answer is 7 times. 7 Fucking times we played that game. And that's only on the PS3. I bet I've played that games 10 times to completion. This game is exactly what I wanted out of a RPGFPS. Great gun play, the devs sacrificed headshots for better fights. Looting was great. And Lilith is incredibly fun to play. All the characters have several different ways to be played. You can dump weeks and weeks and weeks into that game. Also, the humor was delivered perfectly. Not too in your face, but just noticeable enough to crack you over the head with a joke. I think I might just go play a bit.

1. Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne - 6 years.
6 years blizzard.
I want those back please.
I could probably write a book on why this game is so good.
But I won't because other people are more eloquent than me in this thread.
Needless to say, this is the reason my top ten is so recent. Because fuck other games I literally have a modding scene that makes better games than most triple As. You can't get bored with it. It's impossible.
It even made a genre.
But not after the correct game. I want my angel arena esque MOBA. Come on that would be fantastic. Limited item components, bosses. What's not to love? Although there would be a lot of balancing needed to bring it modern. (Like no 1v1s every 5 minutes >.>) W/e

Azarthes said
1. Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne

Elendra said
Warcraft 3

Holmishire said
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne

Jorick said
9. Warcraft 3

Brovo said
#10. Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.

The people who matter in this thread.

Alright, let's do this.

1. Crusader Kings 2
One of the best grand strategy games of all time. My god. As of now, I've sunk more hours into this game on my Steam Library more than any other game, with 327 hours total, with the majority of those hours spent playing the ASOIAF mod. Nothing is greater than raiding Westeros and beyond as King Balon Greyjoy. Plus, who can disagree with this screenshot?

I mean, just look at all those bastards.

2. Fallout New Vegas/The Elder Scrolls Skyrim
Two Bethesda titles here that I simply love. New Vegas is my second most hours logged out of all my games, with 131 hours in total. Mods only make this post-apocalyptic tale of revenge even better. Now, Skyrim, as terrifying as its spiders are, is a pretty amazing game. Even before I got it on Steam, I loved playing it on my PS3, and I'll love it even more now that I'm able to mod it to my heart's content.

3. Hotline Miami
I bought this gem back in...January of last year on a whim, not sure what it would be like. I am so glad I got it, looking back on it. This is a masterpiece of pixelated violence, and there is truly no game like it. I highly recommend it, because it's an amazing game with an amazing soundtrack.

4. Brutal Legend
This popped my cherry. No, seriously. This fucking game introduced me to heavy metal as a whole. It's such an amazing and funny title that stars Jack Black...as Jack Black. Not really, but Double Fine's homage to Heavy Metal is what got me into the genre as a whole, having previously only listened to Sabaton. Go get it, and go love it.

5. Postal 2
This game, released in 03, singlehandedly took every controversial topic ever, and mashed them all together in one of the funniest, albeit crude, games I've ever played. Running with Scissors puts Rockstar to shame, and despite the dated graphics, it's a blast to play. Go get it, if you're capable of putting up with a game that, among other things, uses a cat as a silencer.

6. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Now, I probably should've put this up higher on the list, but fuck it. I love this game man, it's the last game by the amazing folks over at Troika Games, and with the care and love of the modding community, is now a game that's much more enjoyable than the base game. If you like VTM, go get this game.

7. Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs Death
You are the Law.
And you can arrest fatties.

8. The Banner Saga
As with VTMB, I /should/ have put this higher up, but it only just crossed my mind to include this. It's got a fuck-ton of lore, wonderful graphics, and a compelling story. Buy it, play it, love it.

9. Uplink
Fucking hell, I just got fired for hacking into a bank.
An old and hard game. It's pretty fun, if I do say so myself.

10. Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon
You can get a quadruple-barreled shotgun that fires incendiary rounds.
Nuff said.

Honorable Mentions:
Blackguards: For being an excellent RPG that sticks to its tabletop roots.
The Walking Dead Season 1: For pulling on my heartstrings.
Mass Effect Trilogy: Decent stuff.
One Finger Death Punch: For helping me waste time, and for being mindless fun.
Papers, Please: For being the best customs agent simulator there is.
Gunpoint: For letting me punch guards until they're ground beef.
Sid Meier's Pirates: Good old fun.
And some others that I'm too lazy to list.

Oh dear Lord, how did I forget Brutal Legend? D: