The best game you have ever played

[Dr. Killjoy]

My personal favorites are:

3: Super Metroid (Nintendo)

Despite being over fifteen years old, this is still an incredible game for me. While there are plenty of games out there focused on open-ended exploration, this one strikes a fine enough balance between hinting where to go and letting you find things for yourself that I didn't really feel like I was wandering aimlessly or being herded. The game has great environments that, despite being on a 16-bit system, have design, graphics, and music that make them incredibly atmospheric. Furthermore, the game is absolutely packed with secret areas and hidden powerups waiting for the careful and observant player, making all of this exploring very rewarding. While I actually found the combat only sort of good, no other game I've played has come close to rivaling this one for providing a world that seemed to have a life of its own, just waiting to be explored.

2: Master of Orion (Microprose)

It's a turn-based strategy, which means we're off to a good start because that happens to be my favorite genre. Master of Orion has you take the role of the leader of an interstellar empire. Starting with only your home planet, some basic space travel technology, a colony ship, and a couple scout ships, you set out to claim the galaxy for your own. You divide your colonies' resources between tasks such as building ships, building missile defenses, and cleaning up industrial waste. You research new technologies that, among many other things, allow your colonies to support more people, enable your ships to travel farther, and let you use more powerful weapons. You also design your ships using the component types you've gathered through research, which is a tricky matter - every gadget you add makes your ship more expensive and takes up space, every gun you add means you have to make do with less powerful shielding. You also have to form new colonies, but carefully - expand too quickly and you will be overextended, and the other races will steamroll your underdefended outer planets. Expand too slowly and you will not have the resources to survive later in the game. You also have to worry about diplomacy with other races - if you're a good negotiator, you can pretty much play the other races however you want; furthermore, having the most factories and newest toys won't help if everyone else hates your guts. Then come the wars, where it isn't just about numerical and technological superiority; as long as the fight is remotely fair, when and where you attack and defend will be critical to deciding the outcome of the battle. Master of Orion is a deep strategy game that requires the player to learn a lot of skills, but sadly it lacks multiplayer support. True, online play wasn't available when this game came out, but how difficult would it have been to program a hotseat mode?

1: UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-Com: UFO Defense (Microprose)

An excellent strategy game, made by Microprose, and my only complaint is it lacks multiplayer support. Eerily similar to #2, now that I think about it.

In X-Com, you are the commander of the titular organization, whose purpose is to combat a group of aliens that are menacing Earth. You have to find their UFOs, send fighters to shoot them down, and send squads of soldiers to recover alien artifacts from the wrecks. You also have to deal with alien terror attacks on major cities, storm alien bases, and defend your own bases from alien attack. You start out with modern-day technology, but as you capture alien artifacts, your scientists can research them, and your engineers can produce weapons, armor, and aircraft that use the aliens' own technology against them. Your funding nations supply you with money every month - do a good job, and they'll increase their commitment. Do poorly, and they will lose confidence in you and reduce - or even cease - their contributions. You are also in charge of all logistics - you must buy weapons for, and individually equip, each of your soldiers. No matter how hard you fight on Earth, though, the only way to win is to find the aliens and defeat them at their homeworld. And to discover where that is, you will have to capture and interrogate live aliens.

X-Com is brutal from square one, and never really lets up; that's actually part of the reason for its appeal to me. Until you research alien armor, you will rarely have wounded soldiers because the aliens' more powerful weapons will most likely kill them outright. Furthermore, the aliens are far more accurate than your own troops. The better weapons require extensive research and you must tap into your limited supply of alien materials to build them. Any human soldier that survives more than a few missions is lucky - the unlucky ones die the minute they step out of the dropship. Sometimes you'll be forced to abandon a city and let the aliens massacre the populace, funding nations be damned, because the battle is hopeless. Sometimes you'll lose 50% or more of your squad to a grenade that seemed to have come out of nowhere. Still, with proper planning, victory is very much possible, and so much sweeter because of how tough it is to achieve.

[AsherTheWilliams]

Best game huh?

I'd have to say Medieval II: Total War.

I sunk so, so many hours into conquering Europe in high school.
Few times have been so at peace than when I was a digitized king.
Empire: Total War, is a fine sequel.
The combat was not as satisfying though.

[Mantis]

This is very difficult to decide. It's like asking someone what their favourite film is. If they can give a straight answer, they haven't watched enough films. Your enjoyment of a film may be situational, and you may prefer different films at different times. The same goes for video games, I believe.

I do look forward to trying out X-Com when I figure out how to get Dosbox running on my Pandora. Master of Orion also sounds good. I've never been a big fan of Metroid games but I'm basing my judgement on the more recent 3D titles for the most part. As for my "favourites", hmm. I'd have to give a top ten, in no particular order. That's the only way I could do it, and even then it's difficult. As I can't be arsed writing huge summaries this time...

• Sonic the Hedgehog (1991 - Mega Drive): Shame the hedgehog's name's gone to shame—this was a brilliant platformer.
• Final Fantasy VIII (1999 - PlayStation): Arguably the most underrated Final Fantasy game, this had a brilliant narrative, a great combat system and deserves more credit.
• Halo: Combat Evolved - (2001 - Xbox): Some say this changed FPS gaming for the worse. I'd agree, but that's essentially Microsoft's fault and not the game's. An excellent first-person shooter and as people often say, the original is the best. By far in this case.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2005 - DS): Phoenix Wright gave me a better introduction to the adventure genre. The series as a whole has a nice narrative with excellent characters and an unforgettable soundtrack.
• Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (2010 - DS): Sadly, Cing's last game—they'd gone out of business right after this game was released. They certainly gave those who were wanting a sequel to Hotel Dusk something way worth waiting for. It's a brilliant adventure game and I'll always remember the mysteries Kyle Hyde had to unravel.
• Perfect Dark (2000 - Nintendo 64): Essentially one of Rare's last games, if memory serves. Microsoft buying Rare out led to the company's demise. At least, as far as quality goes. Perfect Dark wasn't perfect, but it sure as hell showed that FPS works well on a console—even with the N64's awkward controller! The campaign mode was highly enjoyable, the multiplayer was a blast (surpassed GoldenEye), and I'm glad they re-released it in HD on Xbox Live Arcade recently.
• Grandia (1997 - PlayStation): An RPG for the PlayStation following a protagonist called Justin. It was one of the first turn-based RPGs to heavily use voice acting, and the voices were actually pretty good. Most importantly for a turn-based RPG though, the battle system was well designed, and I'm definitely going to complete this again using my Pandora. It's been a long time.
• Chrono Trigger (1995 - Super Nintendo): This RPG was never released in Europe, sadly, for some reason unbeknownst to me. I never really got a chance to play it until a short couple of years ago. Wow, I really missed out. First of all, this didn't have random battles. If you want to compare it to a recent RPG, initiating a battle is a bit like Final Fantasy XIII; you have to be physically near a monster to fight it. Great story, great visuals for its time, great soundtrack, and a highly memorable experience.
• Half-Life 2 (2004 - PC): The Metacritic score should sum it up. The original Half-Life was an excellent FPS, and this surpasses it, considerably so. I can't believe it's been nearly seven years since its release. Damn I'm getting old.
• Metal Gear Solid (1998 - PS1): Yeah, now I'm being lazy and I've written enough for this post. It's a great game. There. I'm getting something to eat.
  

[BaronOfStuff]

In a word?

DOOM.

[Katey]

You're all gonna cry but the most time I spent on a game was the Sims and the Sims 2. I bloody loved those games to death.

[jaywray]

1 ) shadow of colossus - ps2
Amazing story, loved ico, for its day it had really good graphics, straight to the point with awesome memorable bosses.

2 ) the next game i do not know the name to, you've to catch monkeys that had escaped, with a net, probably around 11 years old or somthing on the ps1. back when i was a kid. i LOVED. that game.

3 ) spyro 2 - ps1 ^_^ just an awesome game!

[Bloodylilcorpse]

Thats hard to say! I loved the old school games the best! I loved playing Mario or Donkey Kong on Nintendo.

[BaronOfStuff]

(01-02-2011 04:45 PM)jaywray Wrote:  2 ) the next game i do not know the name to, you've to catch monkeys that had escaped, with a net, probably around 11 years old or somthing on the ps1. back when i was a kid. i LOVED. that game.

Ape Escape. The first PSX game that required an Analog Controller to play at all.

[jaywray]

THATS IT. oh how i would kill to go back to them days, i was pretty young, and that game seemed SOOO hard to me :')

[Aishawasframed!]

I'm not sure... I really liked the old Star Wars Battlefront series, especially the original and 2. First shooter games I had.