Top lists, anyone?

[strizzuth]

Why not list our top 5 games in any category you want?  Why?  I guess I just like watching people fight over minor disagreements.  But yeah, any category, even top 5 worst games of all time.  I was personally trying to think of my top 5 NES games and I really just can't figure it out.  A lot of games I loved at the time just don't hold up for me personally.  That said, my top 5 favorites of all time haven't changed much in the last 10 years.


5) Saint's Row 2

Yeah, the 3rd and 4th games brought so many great things to the table, but SR2 has 2 things that, in my mind, make it stand head and shoulders above its sequels.  First, there's a lot more customization.  Getting to upgrade your cribs made me a lot more personally invested in them and Stillwater just somehow felt more alive to me than Steelport.  Second, it had an easy listening station.  Screw that stupid Adult Swim station from SR3.  Nothing compares to running over civilians and getting into a high speed shootout with the cops to the smooth sounds of Norman Candler.

4)  Act Raiser

Maybe it's the amazing soundtrack.  Maybe it's rose tinted nostalgia.  Maybe it's just the fact that this game is ridiculously well made.  Whatever the reason, every time I play this game (which happens every other year or so) I absolutely can't put it down until I've beaten it.

3) Silent Hill

When I first saw previews for this game I thought it looked like a stupid Resident Evil knockoff.  It didn't help that the videos for some reason fixated on stomping on bugs.  When I played it, the game got under my skin in a way that very few ever manage to.  The funny thing is, the game still manages to creep me out.  The goddamn phone scene chills my blood to this day.  Everyone praises the second game, and I love that game too, but the first one scared me so much more.

2) Super Metroid

Yeah, who didn't see that coming...

1) Shadow of the Colossus

Ico was great and all but as a game it wasn't too different from Prince of Persia.  SotC takes everything that was great about Ico and turns it into a drastically different experience.  It has that same sort of implicit plot line that I LOVE to obsess over, but instead of being a linear experience it's very open world.  And somehow this open world feels interesting.  I still enjoy just riding around and getting lost just to see all the scenery.  I seriously think some bits of land were meant to be used as set pieces for something that never materialized.  Or maybe the devs just wanted to reward you for exploring or deepen the sense of mystery.  When you finally encounter a colossus, you go from enjoying the tranquil but eerily empty landscape to running frantically for dear life to try and figure out how to climb the gigantic thing you're supposed to kill.  When you finally figure it out, you feel like a hero from an ancient legend.  Not to mention the game is drenched in symbolism but none of it is ever explained.  What are those rings in the desert?  What sort of god is Dormin?  And while we're at it, WHAT ARE THE COLOSSI AND HOW DID THEY GET THERE?  As far as I'm concerned, technical issues aside, this game is PERFECT.

[cambertian]

Mine is pretty consistently changing. I keep encountering new games that blow me away. Regardless, here's my current list:

5) Toejam and Earl
"A really trippy walking-simulator," as my brother would describe it. Part dungeon-crawler, part live-action, all good in my book. It's one of my favorites, but I wouldn't consider it one of the best.

4) Pacman Championship Edition DX
Nice and sleek, fast and frantic. Gameplay is a real boost up from the original Pacman, in my opinion.

3) Power Stone 2
Even without multiplayer, this game is fun. I love the item-combination system.

2) Wario Land 4
The Wario Land series has always been my favorite. To be honest, this one was a toss-up. This one's a little more linear than the first 3, but still delivers some awesome action.

1) Earthbound
Does it need an explanation?

[Weasel]

I have a hard time picking all time favorites, so I'll just have to settle for stuff I liked recently...

Doom - yep, after 20 years this game is still going strong. I encourage newcomers to download ZDoom and try out the amazing Pirate Doom total conversion.

Just Cause 2 - Honestly, even though Saints Row 4 has way more awesome story, I can not think of an open world game that has kept me entertained longer than this one. I love being able to stick stuff together, hitching rides on enemy helicopters, and do all kinds of horribly implausible stunts. All without the benefit of superpowers.

Etrian Odyssey Untold - Classic dungeon crawling without all the headaches of a Wizardry game. The new story is actually pretty entertaining.

Fire Emblem Awakening - and how could I let a recent favorites list go by without putting this in it? I've beaten the game nearly three times, achieved around sixty percent of the support lines, and own half the DLC maps. The series does an amazing job at giving the characters unique traits, instead of letting them become generic classes. I want more no nonsense strategy games like this one.

[Deleted]

I've got a pair of rose tinted glasses as the following list will show. They are in no particular order:

Metal Gear Solid
Resident Evil
Final Fantasy VI
Bionic Commando (NES)
Super Castlevania IV

I'm sure I could write long winded indulgent justifications for each (overlooking all their flaws due to nostalgia and greatly exaggerating their good points) but I'll put it simply - they are all games I've greatly enjoyed in the past, loved playing through multiple times and would do so almost any day of the week if I didn't feel oddly obligated to play through new releases.
5 is also too cruel- leaving out Resident Evil 4, Symphony of the Night, Dark Souls and the like breaks my heart.

[Deleted]

Dark Souls
Dark Souls II
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistance
Silent Hill 2: Greatest Hits
Katamari Damacy

[alphex]

Mega Man X
The first Mega Man game I got, and probably still my favorite. Music, control and level design are all almost perfect. The sheer sense of progression, the dramatic involvement of Zero, the level of detail in the gameplay... absolutely awesome all around.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 (PSX)
NOT the first Street Fighter game I got, but thanks to the juggle system, the world tour mode and the variety of characters it was the one I enjoyed the most by far. Not a fan of V-ISM / high level gameplay for this one, but still - one incredible blast if played against equally skilled friends.

Super Mario World
The reason I wanted a SNES. Probably still my favorite 2D jump & run of all time, maybe even my favorite video game period.

Quest For Glory IV (CD version with fan patches applied)
Sadly, this game is pretty buggy. Otherwise, one fantastic journey with awesome puzzles, great characters, a smart storyline and a surprisingly fun battle system.

Not sentimentally attached, but I still love the games dearly:

Super Metroid
I guess you all know why this game deserves a ton of praise. Atmosphere, sense of exploration, level design and control are all top-notch.

Streets Of Rage Remake
Most likely my favorite 2D beat 'em up. And I love that genre.

Silent Hill
I was scared shitless by that game, and I first played it when I was 20 years old. Incredible atmosphere.

NBA Hang Time
Still one of the best multiplayer games ever. Boomshakalaka!

[Feynman]

With the disclaimer that any list of my favorite games is going to vary somewhat every time I'm asked based on my mood and/or what kind of games I've been playing a lot of recently:

Deus Ex - Perhaps my favorite game ever, Deus Ex has been constantly installed on every single computer I have ever owned since the day the game launched. The depth of player interaction with the environment is remarkable.

Castlevania 3 - Best Castlevania game ever, full stop. Great music, great level design, tons of variety and replayability, with the difficulty tuned just so. Everything a 2D action game should aspire to be.

Dark Souls - The Castlevania 3 of 3D action games.

Planescape: Torment - One of the very few times in history where you can say "this game has excellent writing" without including an asterisk and "for a video game."

La-Mulana - The game that dethroned Super Metroid as my favorite metroidvania-style game ever. A perfect balance between action and puzzles, an extravagantly detailed game world, and rock-solid mechanics.

[susanismyalias]

Dark Souls - I can break sequence, I can do level 1 runs, I can pvp, I can just appreciate the art direction. I don't know what else I would want.

Final Fantasy V - Lighthearted, 4th wall breaking final fantasy. Job system is basically all I can ask from a classic ff. The only way it could be better is if it had the CTB from FFX.

New Vegas - With the JSawyer mod, this is essentially a perfect rpg. I've put over 100 hours in and I've actally never bothered beating the main campaign. There isn't a single build that is impossible. The choices that open up with skill chekcs are great, and a good translation of the options presented in a good rpg, pnp or otherwise.

[Super Orbus]

I don't actually like games. I just like bitching talking about them.



Oh okay, games I've been playing in the last month (in no particular order).

Pokemon X - soul crushingly repetitive and easy, yet I keep playing
The Witcher - seems pretty okay, but isn't really grabbing and holding my interest so far
The Last of Us - technically amazing, but kind of a chore to play
Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag - actually quite fun

[TheGunheart]

Not an exhaustive list, just some stuff that sprang to mind.

Psychonauts: Probably my favorite 3D platformer ever. Varied level design, fun writing and characters, and some inventive takes on typial platforming powers. And while there were lots of things to collect, I liked how each level had a plotline to it instead of just being a set of treasures to grab.

Resident Evil 4: Just an impeccably design horror shooter that strikes a great balance of action, exploration, and tension.

No More Heroes: Cathartic combat, awesome boss fights and Suda51's trademark mix of humor and over-the-top violence mixing to create a subtly nightmarish atmosphere. Easily my favorite game on the Wii.

Devil May Cry 3: My favorite action game of all time. Dante's already my fave action game hero, and the new moves and fluidity of the combat are just awesome. Hard as hell, too.

Max Payne 2 - The Fall of Max Payne: Just love the mix of Film Noir and crazy Matrix gunfights.

Klonoa 2 - Lunatea's Veil: Gorgeous backgrounds, wonderful atmosphere, a fun yet simple main gimmick, and a surprisingly engaging story.

Fallout - New Vegas: Just an all around awesome action RPG with a truly staggering scale, even without the surprisingly well made DLC. Also love the "Sci-fi Wild West" feel to it.

Riviera - The Promised Land: A combination Visual Novel and RPG with a charming cast and setting, and a fairly unique character progression system.

Sonic Rush: Love the soundtrack, Blaze was the best new character since Tails, and it even had my favorite type of special stage.

Halo 3: It's a toss up between this one and 4, but I think this one's vehicular sequences and structure put it a little ahead for me.

Guacamelee!: Not the hardest metroidvania around, but the level design is excellent and the combat a fun change from the usual for the genre. Just wish there was more of it.

[X-pert74]

Resident Evil 4 - I've played through this... how many times? I think it's 16, counting both the Wii and Xbox 360 versions. No matter how many times I play it, I still find it incredibly engaging to play through. It's very well-paced, and has a combat system that consistently engages. It's manageable, yet still tense as hell.

X-COM: UFO Defense - Along with being very challenging, it also has an incredibly atmosphere and soundtrack. It's very creepy and scary at times, which is one thing I personally miss in the XCOM reboot.

Umihara Kawase - I've played this a billion times, and still enjoy coming back to it. The physics associated with Umihara's grappling hook are a joy to mess around with. I love trying to find new ways through each level and shaving seconds off my previous record times.

Doom - One of the most absolutely intense action games I've ever played. It's still very playable to this day; I wish more FPSes today were like Doom.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door - Along with Resident Evil 4, this is one of the only games I've ever played where, after finishing my first playthrough, I immediately proceeded to start up and finish a second playthrough because I didn't want it to be over. This is a very charming game, that I personally really wish would get a direct sequel. I really want to revisit the characters of Rogueport in a new game.

[Sac (a.k.a Icaras)]

Top Five MMORPGs


5: Aion
A Korean MMO, it was getting alotta press back at the time of its release, mainly for its graphics (Which STILL looking really good). The game has a kind of angelic theme, with PCs sporting wings, but sadly the game kinda lies in this respect, as you only display your wings while flying, not all the time, and the amount of places you can actually fly is majorly limited. Its actually really jarring, as in the 1st zone u quest in after you earn your wings, you can fly at 1st. But a small ways into the zone, u ram, into an invisible barrier, for some unexplained reason, and are told "no flying here".

That said, if you jump off high areas and hit the jump button u will sprout your wings and glide which is awesome.

It actually has a pretty neat player housing system. While all players can get an apartment (Which is instanced, so everyone enters the same entrance portal, but has their own version of the free apartment.), there is actually a zone which houses and mansions and the like that players can buy and put furniture in, some stuff u can interact with too. Sadly they're insanely expensive unless you get to end game and earn heaps of in game currency.

The main issue with this game is that its what known as a grinder. The game is good about hiding this aspect at 1st, but the further in u play, the easier it is to get to a stage where you basically need to grind mobs to level. The game has drastically cut back on this as it patches , especially since it went free to play, but I still find I always get discouraged and can never quite hit level cap


4: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Basically a WoW clone game, but one that's set in the star wars universe. The 2 factions both share the same 4 classes(empire and republic), they're just cosmetically different (For example, the "Han Solo" like class(I forget what its called) uses pistols, while the empire version as "Imperial agents and use sniper rifles, but they share the same skills and use the same stats)
There was a space mini game, but it was an on rails mini game style thing you played with the mouse. (Recent patches has added a free roaming style space combat system, but I've not tried it).
Its main difference is that each class has a storyline, and even the in between normal quests are fully voiced.

It also has some crazy restrictions on its free to play model, which IMO, badly hurts the game, tho I hear it still makes a lot of money from its cash shop.


3: Rift
, its fully free to play like Aion (the main reason I rate it ahead of SWTOR), however I really don't like the graphics for the player races, they all have a bit of a waxy, uncanny valley look about them.
It also has a unique feature in the rifts of the title, but I found them to be fairly unenaging content, at least at lower levels. I've not reached end game levels in rift, so I can't comment on it further.

As its fully free to play, I still play this in small doses, usually doing 1 or 2 PVP games to gain some exp for my mage.


2: Final Fantasy 14
I don't feel like going into too much details (There was a thread on Ff14 a little while back, I think it may even have been one I made) but it basically takes the best parts of the earlier games and combines them. I didn't stick with it for a combination of performance issues on my machine and and that i didn't want to sub full time to FF14 and WoW


1: World of Warcraft
There's really nothing I need to say for this game, even if you're not an MMO gamer, if you haven't heard of WoW...well, if you haven't, I doubt your realkly a gamer and you're not actually on this forum

[loempiavreter]

In no particular order, the 5 games that influenced me for better or worse:

- Virtua Cop 3, while HOTD was what got me into the genre. It's Virtua Cop 3 that I see as the creme the la creme. Enjoyable, great boss fights, good amount of enemy grunts on screen (which triggers you to use your slomo). Many action sequences Top Drawer! I can't decide if I like this better or Ghost Squad (which has tons of cool variation and nice multiple path system, but doesn't have as cool levels as Virtua Cop 3).
- The Guardians (Denjin Makai II)
Cyberpunk beat'em up from the top drawer. The creme the la creme, huge bosses, tons of joke narrativity hidden in the background (which taught me to tell stuff not by spoonfeeding it but by hiding it in the background), one of the best fighting systems in the genre. I wish there where as much bosses as their was enemy varariation though
- Killer 7
Using sound as a big gameplay element, the heavenly laughs, will laugh and ths will betray their location. This is seemingly a neat gameplay idea in Killer8 where enemies stay invisible until you find them and are only located by laughing direction, unfortuantely GhM didn't had the balls to make it the main game.
- Ninja Ryukenden (Famicom)
Set the stanard for fast paced action platformers, although I played Revenge of Shinobi as maybe the very first type of this game and Ninja Ryukenden only later by emulation first. It's the most enjoyable game of it's kind and it kinda made me addicted to the minimalist look of Famicom graphics.
- God Hand
I love how your perfomance affect the world. Make the percentage of encountering demons higher with a amount of % if your performing good and lower if you perform like shit.


Honourble mentions to:
- Zombie Revenge
The many secret pathways that can either be helping you or trobeling you with all sorts of traps (walls enclosing), a one off secret weapon bunker wher you can stock yourself with weapons, a hard but 1cc doable game.
- Kamniari Kishi Riot
Bringing the crosshair shooter further by being shot on two sides, crazy ass boss fights and boss setting/design everything!
- Demon Souls
Similar to God hand many rules that has affect on the gameworld.
- Contra Hard Corps, Alien Soldier, Strider (arcade), Cannon Dancer
Made me appreciate action sequences, don't give the players room to breath. Boss fight, action sequence, Boss fight, boss fight, action sequence, action sequence.

Yeah hard to really make a top 5.

[cambertian]

Mar 15, 2014 13:52:06 GMT -5 @jasonx said:

Dark Souls
Dark Souls II
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistance
Silent Hill 2: Greatest Hits
Katamari Damacy

ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS

Though yeah, Katamari Damacy probably would've been #6 on my list.

[Dingo]

My favorites change from time to time, but I'd say this is about as close as I can get to a concrete list.

- Etrian Odyssey - While I do love the improvements that later games in the EO series introduced, I find the basic experience to be my favorite. Completing everything the game has to offer is much more manageable, and I really enjoyed the classes and skills (even if Immunize breaks the game).

- Super Castlevania IV/Castlevania Chronicles - Okay, I'm going to cheat here and list two games for one spot. CV IV has always been my favorite Castlevania game, but I fell in love with Chronicles after playing it for the first time early last year. It's hard for me to choose between these two now.

- Super Metroid - This has already been covered in the thread it seems. Great atmosphere, great bosses, great everything.

- Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 - Really great fighting mechanics. It's fast without being hectic, and feels very natural to play. Very well balanced, too.

- Dark Souls - It would be wrong to not list this game in my top five. I initially didn't enjoy Dark Souls, feeling it was too different from Demon's Souls, but it slowly grew on me. I really enjoy the art direction and atmosphere present in the Souls games, and appreciate how the games never hold your hand or force you to play through mind numbing tutorials.