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I can't tell you my favorite movie, food, T.V. show, actor, or anything like that, but one time someone asked me what my favorite game was and I surprisingly enough, was able to answer the question. Yes, I know we've had threads like this before, but I'm talking about the end-all-be-all of games. Your down right favorite, how it made you feel, what was unique about it, why everyone should play, were your later playthroughs actually more enjoyable than your first, how often you play it, is it one that you can come back to over and over again without ever getting sick of it. No top 10, no top 3, just the 1. If you make a convincing case, a few of might check it out.

My favorite would be a little gem from Square Enix called 'The World Ends With You', its a JRPG (yeah, I know) that came out in 2008 for the Nintendo DS. You take on the role of your emo (yet likable) teen and battle the noise along with friends (and a specific partner) in a fictionalized version of Shibuya (a shopping District in Tokyo). There's a lot more to the plot, but I'll skimp on those details.

This game shines in its combat, its mainly stylist controlled, slide, tap, drag, or whatever to activate your psych (there are a SHIT LOAD to choose from, but you start with 2 and eventually progress to 6) to crush your enemies. You also have the option to simultaneously control your partner (I still haven't gotten the hang of it so I let the computer take care of it) with the D-pad/ABYX buttons.

Music, easily one of the best game soundtracks ever. Catchy Japanese tunes play as you battle, go through menus, and travel around the city. These songs feel like they were specifically made for the game. Definitely play this game with headphones. The songs get even better as you progress.

Likable characters, I liked everyone in this game, good or baddy. The writing gave just about everyone a certain feel along with multiple dimensions. I mean, just when you're ready to write someone off as a douche, emo, or asshole, they just might surprise you.

An endgame, just when you think its over, the game keeps on giving. It allows you to explore its lore and look more into things that were done by certain characters. It also provides an alternative little short story to play through.

Gets better with each playthrough, there were so many things that went over my head in my first playthrough so by the time I got to my 2nd, I was like, wait I could do that, I could do that, holy fuck, this game just got better.

The City itself is a character, you get to read the thoughts of strangers, get to know some of the minor characters through the occasional run-in.

Its not perfect, but its damn close. I can't say you'll immediately fall in love with it, I only thought it was okay, up until half way into chapter 1 (there are 3 chapter, all of which are lengthy), that's when I really started to invest. Once chapter 2 started, I was like 'this shit just got real'.

Well they say seeing is believing, so here's the trailer (I never even saw this until after I played the game).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPFEkmq0z6k

Posts before thread degenerates into giant lists of 'favourite games ever' 10 ... 9 ... 8...

That said, I doubt I could name a single game. I've been playing games for nearly thirty years.

I couldn't name any single one. Mainly because I'm in the same boat as Stark; I've played too damn many.

It's not that hard of a choice for me, it has to be Super Mario Brothers. It was the first game I ever played as a young kid and I have memories of my and my dad playing that when I was little. I don't think any game can compare to your first, even less so when the game is a masterpiece like that game was.

Do you think the same thing about your first lover?

The first game I remember playing was Frogger. Wow, my favourite game!

Stark wrote:Do you think the same thing about your first lover?

The first game I remember playing was Frogger. Wow, my favourite game!

It's not really the same, I don't get the same joy out of sitting in front of a TV an playing a game that used too. Now I have a PS3 and it can sit for days without me even thinking of it though I can use it whenever I would like. When I was a child I would have loved to play all day long but was never allowed to and thus relished what time I was allowed. This thread is about how a game made you feel.

To elaborate, while games now are certainly more advanced I find myself being disappointed more and more as each new game fails to fully use everything that technology has given it to work within. Super Mario Brothers used everything the system had down to the last kilobytes of space on the cartridge. Games today don't have those hard limits and in some ways that is better, but you never get the joy of knowing that a designer gave everything they had and simply could not give the player a better experience.

My favorite gaming memory is playing Rogue Squadron II on the night I got my gamecube with all my buddies. I don't enjoy games like I used to, as a kid I could enjoy anything without even noticing any flaws it had. Combined with megahype for the game and having a good time with my friends, that probably takes the cake.

Overall favorite game is probably Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Heroes of Might and Magic III or Company of Heroes. All classics.

Norade wrote:To elaborate, while games now are certainly more advanced I find myself being disappointed more and more as each new game fails to fully use everything that technology has given it to work within. Super Mario Brothers used everything the system had down to the last kilobytes of space on the cartridge. Games today don't have those hard limits and in some ways that is better, but you never get the joy of knowing that a designer gave everything they had and simply could not give the player a better experience.

I guarantee you didn't sit as a child, playing Super Mario Bros., thinking "oh wow I am so grateful the developers really did all they could with this game". And frankly, they didn't. If Super Mario Bros used everything the system had, how could Super Mario Bros 3 use the same system to do more, not to mention do it better? Bullshit like "games today don't..." belongs in Youtube comments (especially if it's to complain about realistic graphics. Sorry, people really did swoon over blocky polygons back in the '90s too. It's been an integral part of marketing since ever). It's okay to like old games, but if someone claims to have objective reasons for why "games have gotten progressively worse since [Final Fantasy VII]" they're just an annoying dick.

Easy choice, Forgotten Hope a mod for Battlefield 1942. Yes it's a world war 2 game you say. Single player bots were idiots as well, but it was online where I got my fun. See World War II was a big place, unlike most WWII shooters that masturbate to the 82nd airborne and a valorous charge to Berlin, Forgotten Hope was one of the few games that remembered, hey the war went on for four years BEFORE June 6th 1944. You'd get on-line with 63 other players and the shear variety of maps and plays styles was crazy. The only game to date to capture that.

Because in the BF1942 engine, it was quite possible to model infantry, air, armor and sea combat. You could spend one round storming the beaches of Wake as the Japanese either manning a destroyer to shell the beaches so your infantry could get ashore while watching out for shore guns that could sink you. Or you might spend that very same round manning a Zero and strafing transport trying to reinforce the point your infantry were attacking and calling out enemy movements as you saw them. Or you might spend the round on the ground in half a dozen roles be it support gunner with your LMG, sapper to mine roads and destroy APC's or as a blog standard rifleman assaulting a point with grenades, rifle and bayonet.

FH combat was good like that, the map could be one of several types. Conquest where there are 3-7 flags on the map which both sides are trying to capture. Objective where one side has things to protect and the other side has to destroy those things. Standard CTF and Deathmatch of course were there but little played and of course the Conquest variants like Push where one side started with all the flags and the other side had to capture them in a specific order. And of course adding to that big old plus was the variety of maps in addition to variety of types. There was not the one objective map and the two or three push maps. The Forgotten hope map list put list of any Halo or Modern Warfare to shame.

1939

Eastern Blitz
Fall Weiss

1940

Battle of Britain
Counterattack
Crete
Tobruk

1941

Rheinuebung
Invasion of the Philippines
Wake

1942

Battle of Stalingrad
Pavlov's House
Stalingrad
Desert Rose
El Alamein
Gazala
Supercharge
Coral Sea
Guadal Canal
Midway
Midway-1942


1943

Bombing the Reich
Battle of Orel
Battle of Valirisk
Kharkov Outskirts
Kharkov Winter
Prokhorovka
Kasserine Pass
Adak Island
Battle of Makin
Tarawa



1944

Arnhem
Battle of Foy
Battle of the Bulge
Bocage
Breakthrough
Falaise Pocket
Gold Beach
In the hell of Bocage
Liberation of Caen
Market Garden
Meuse River Line
Omaha Beach Charlie Sector
Operation Goodwood
Operation Nordwind
Pegasus Bridge
Ramelle Neuville
Sector 318
Karelia
The Storm
Zielona Gora
Battle Isle
Saipan
Saipan-1944

1945

Alpenfestung
Operation Blackknight
Berlin
Berlin Streets
Seelow Heights
Iwo Jima

Over sixty maps, while some maps might be similar in tone (IE Zielona Gora & Pegasus Bridge are big infantry fights) because they occur in different theaters with different armies they still feel like very different maps. And there are maps with nothing else like them. Seelow Heights is a massive slugfest down a road on the way into Berlin. The ground is shelled and cratered, it's a push map with two very hard to defend flags backed up by three ever more easy to defend flags until you hit the Axis mainbase itself with it's tiny capture area and the fact the entire Axis division(All 32 players) is spawning there along with their tanks and planes. The view distance on Sealow is short so massive tanks are engaging at spitting distance ranges. While Alpenfestung another push map is totally different, that's a map fought on a clear summer's day with every single half brained crazy ass German wunderweapon against the best the British/US forces has to offer.

And there are maps with no equal like Rheinuebung where you must sink the Bismark Or rather it's a massive Navel fight between the German Heavy cruisers with Uboat & spotter plane support VS Torpedo bombers and British destroyers and Battleships.

I've never played a game longer or had as much fun as I had with Forgotten Hope.

Norade wrote: It's not really the same, I don't get the same joy out of sitting in front of a TV an playing a game that used too. Now I have a PS3 and it can sit for days without me even thinking of it though I can use it whenever I would like. When I was a child I would have loved to play all day long but was never allowed to and thus relished what time I was allowed. This thread is about how a game made you feel.

To elaborate, while games now are certainly more advanced I find myself being disappointed more and more as each new game fails to fully use everything that technology has given it to work within. Super Mario Brothers used everything the system had down to the last kilobytes of space on the cartridge. Games today don't have those hard limits and in some ways that is better, but you never get the joy of knowing that a designer gave everything they had and simply could not give the player a better experience.

That sounds like a load of bullshit to me. I know I don't play a game because it pushes the edge of what's possible development wise. Crysis claimed to do that for the PC and frankly I wasn't that impressed. I think if you're so concerned about games "pushing the edge" that it ruins the enjoyment of a game if it doesn't, then you're missing the point.

ps - any developer that claims they've reached a given system's limits is probably full of shit.

Norade wrote:To elaborate, while games now are certainly more advanced I find myself being disappointed more and more as each new game fails to fully use everything that technology has given it to work within. Super Mario Brothers used everything the system had down to the last kilobytes of space on the cartridge. Games today don't have those hard limits and in some ways that is better, but you never get the joy of knowing that a designer gave everything they had and simply could not give the player a better experience.

There's something called a budget. For example District 9 (a movie) did everything it could with its $30 million budget. With $200 (like a lot of the summer movies this year had gotten) ... one could only imagine. Most people can't tell you how much a particular game costs to make so you really can't know what they were working with, whether it was a tight schedule or a limited budget. Besides, when you refer to pushing the system, you're kind of just referring to graphics (and to certain degree set pieces (look at Uncharted 2 or God of War 3)), as long as I have fun with the game, I don't care.

Stark wrote:Do you think the same thing about your first lover?

The first game I remember playing was Frogger. Wow, my favourite game!

Don't be a dick. Nostalgia has a tremendous impact on personal likes and dislikes. For example, I remember playing a TRON arcade game at the local Ponderosa bad in the early 80s. It was a shitty game, but I lived for those quarters my mom would give me to feed into that thing and remember it much more fondly than it deserves. For similar reasons, such as that my first PC was a Commodore 64, I still think The Castles of Doctor Creep was a kickass multiplayer game, even if no self-respecting gamer today would play it.

Tough one. I have very fond memories of playing King's Bounty, the precursor to Heroes of Might and Magic, as a kid. And Diablo II got the most gameplay from me of any game.

But in the end Heroes of Might and Magic II. Was the first game I played on my first windows PC I bought myself in year 11. It was engrossing, entertaining and endless, with user-created maps. I thought every version since has improved part of the game but lost part of the addictiveness of that one. Here's hoping Heroes VI will top it.

Leaving aside the OP's singular intent of waxing nostalgic about a specific title he has in mind, my best GAMING EXPERIENCE doesn't coincide with my favourite game.

That's because the best gaming experiences I've found occur in multiplayer games, especially recent ones. When I play Mass Effect, and something happens that's really cool, I know that I'm just part of the lineup - everyone who bought the game saw they same cut-scene I did or blew up the same boss I did. The experience was no different.

However, when playing multiplayer, you might see shit that causes a double-take, and you might never see that again. I have gameplay stories from Tribes 2 I can excitedly relate, talking about "that time" that I did something cool. And onwards, it seems more people have those kinds of "remember THAT time" experiences when gaming. That's probably why I'm an EVE Online and dedicated Battlefied-series player (all the way from 1942 to Heroes!); you can find experiences that you wouldn't playing singleplayer or MMOs like WoW.

Lagmonster wrote:Leaving aside the OP's singular intent of waxing nostalgic about a specific title he has in mind, my best GAMING EXPERIENCE doesn't coincide with my favourite game.

Its a two year old game, what's there to be nostalgic about?

Lagmonster wrote:That's because the best gaming experiences I've found occur in multiplayer games, especially recent ones. When I play Mass Effect, and something happens that's really cool, I know that I'm just part of the lineup - everyone who bought the game saw they same cut-scene I did or blew up the same boss I did. The experience was no different.

However, when playing multiplayer, you might see shit that causes a double-take, and you might never see that again. I have gameplay stories from Tribes 2 I can excitedly relate, talking about "that time" that I did something cool. And onwards, it seems more people have those kinds of "remember THAT time" experiences when gaming. That's probably why I'm an EVE Online and dedicated Battlefied-series player (all the way from 1942 to Heroes!); you can find experiences that you wouldn't playing singleplayer or MMOs like WoW.

I see where you're coming from. I guess I was mainly referring to single player, it just dawned on me that a lot of you really lean toward multi. I mean in single player, knowing that other people have done the same thing, hasn't really killed my feeling of accomplishment when beating a tough boss or anything, because I'm the one that did it, I took that motherfucker down, whether you did it or not has nothing to do with me. But yes, things do happen in multi sometimes that no has ever seen (or at least we assume because its easy to do so).

I'll think of a better thread title to help get my point across better.
How does 'Your best single player (I.E. campaign) experience' sound?

Dooey Jo wrote:

Norade wrote:To elaborate, while games now are certainly more advanced I find myself being disappointed more and more as each new game fails to fully use everything that technology has given it to work within. Super Mario Brothers used everything the system had down to the last kilobytes of space on the cartridge. Games today don't have those hard limits and in some ways that is better, but you never get the joy of knowing that a designer gave everything they had and simply could not give the player a better experience.

I guarantee you didn't sit as a child, playing Super Mario Bros., thinking "oh wow I am so grateful the developers really did all they could with this game". And frankly, they didn't. If Super Mario Bros used everything the system had, how could Super Mario Bros 3 use the same system to do more, not to mention do it better? Bullshit like "games today don't..." belongs in Youtube comments (especially if it's to complain about realistic graphics. Sorry, people really did swoon over blocky polygons back in the '90s too. It's been an integral part of marketing since ever). It's okay to like old games, but if someone claims to have objective reasons for why "games have gotten progressively worse since [Final Fantasy VII]" they're just an annoying dick.

No, at the time I was just happy to be playing a game when I was young and first playing SMB.

As far as the original SMB versus SMB3 while the later game obviously did more, that first game was the limit of what they could do at the time. They used all the space they had for that game and later on when technology had grown they used a larger cartridge to make the other game. One was on a 320-kilobit cartridge, and the other was on a 3-megebit cartridge that used bank switching to reach that size.

General Zod wrote:

Norade wrote: It's not really the same, I don't get the same joy out of sitting in front of a TV an playing a game that used too. Now I have a PS3 and it can sit for days without me even thinking of it though I can use it whenever I would like. When I was a child I would have loved to play all day long but was never allowed to and thus relished what time I was allowed. This thread is about how a game made you feel.

To elaborate, while games now are certainly more advanced I find myself being disappointed more and more as each new game fails to fully use everything that technology has given it to work within. Super Mario Brothers used everything the system had down to the last kilobytes of space on the cartridge. Games today don't have those hard limits and in some ways that is better, but you never get the joy of knowing that a designer gave everything they had and simply could not give the player a better experience.

That sounds like a load of bullshit to me. I know I don't play a game because it pushes the edge of what's possible development wise. Crysis claimed to do that for the PC and frankly I wasn't that impressed. I think if you're so concerned about games "pushing the edge" that it ruins the enjoyment of a game if it doesn't, then you're missing the point.

ps - any developer that claims they've reached a given system's limits is probably full of shit.

I never said that it pushing the hardware was why I played it. In fact, I wasn't born when the game was still new so that certainly couldn't have been it. The first bit of my post was talking about how I felt about the game, and the second bit was about part of the reason why I still consider the game great today, aside from it being fun.

Norade wrote: I never said that it pushing the hardware was why I played it. In fact, I wasn't born when the game was still new so that certainly couldn't have been it. The first bit of my post was talking about how I felt about the game, and the second bit was about part of the reason why I still consider the game great today, aside from it being fun.

Between these two comments, it certainly gives the impression that you equate pushing hardware with enjoyment.

I don't get the same joy out of sitting in front of a TV an playing a game that used too.

but you never get the joy of knowing that a designer gave everything they had and simply could not give the player a better experience.

General Zod wrote:

Norade wrote: I never said that it pushing the hardware was why I played it. In fact, I wasn't born when the game was still new so that certainly couldn't have been it. The first bit of my post was talking about how I felt about the game, and the second bit was about part of the reason why I still consider the game great today, aside from it being fun.

Between these two comments, it certainly gives the impression that you equate pushing hardware with enjoyment.

I don't get the same joy out of sitting in front of a TV an playing a game that used too.

but you never get the joy of knowing that a designer gave everything they had and simply could not give the player a better experience.

When I was a kid I was just happy to play games, now I'm disappointed that games don't push the limits of hardware and design like they used to. It's all part of why I no longer enjoy games as much as I used to. I still enjoy them, but if I was say 14 when SCII came out you wouldn't be able to get me away from it, now it's just something to have a match or tw on before going and doing something else.

Norade wrote:
When I was a kid I was just happy to play games, now I'm disappointed that games don't push the limits of hardware and design like they used to. It's all part of why I no longer enjoy games as much as I used to. I still enjoy them, but if I was say 14 when SCII came out you wouldn't be able to get me away from it, now it's just something to have a match or tw on before going and doing something else.

Sounds to me like it's just a change in attention span than saying anything about game design. I couldn't care less if a game pushes the envelope of anything as long as it's interesting and tries to bring something new to the table.

My best game experience was the 3-day Eve Online trial over a three-day weekend. I tried it out with a couple of buddies and had a blast; it was as though the game was designed for me. I ended up not getting the game not because I disliked it, but because I could tell I would get addicted and I just didn't have time for that.

Close second is probably Project Reality for Battlefield 2; a game that absolutely requires communication with squadmates and plays like nothing else. Looking for realism in a game? Project Reality comes as close as a video game possibly can.

General Zod wrote:

Norade wrote:
When I was a kid I was just happy to play games, now I'm disappointed that games don't push the limits of hardware and design like they used to. It's all part of why I no longer enjoy games as much as I used to. I still enjoy them, but if I was say 14 when SCII came out you wouldn't be able to get me away from it, now it's just something to have a match or tw on before going and doing something else.

Sounds to me like it's just a change in attention span than saying anything about game design. I couldn't care less if a game pushes the envelope of anything as long as it's interesting and tries to bring something new to the table.

Yeah, maybe, but so many games today don't bring anything new to the table. They're just Gears Reskins, two weapons with health regen = realistic, or lol Mass Effect boring as shit RPGs. I'm not saying there weren't a ton of shit games back when the NES and SNES were hot shit, but entire genres were still being born then. Now there's rarely anything new that wows me and games cost so much to make I'm not sure if we're ever going to get back to the days when games were actually fresh.

Norade wrote: Yeah, maybe, but so many games today don't bring anything new to the table. They're just Gears Reskins, two weapons with health regen = realistic, or lol Mass Effect boring as shit RPGs. I'm not saying there weren't a ton of shit games back when the NES and SNES were hot shit, but entire genres were still being born then. Now there's rarely anything new that wows me and games cost so much to make I'm not sure if we're ever going to get back to the days when games were actually fresh.

Yeah, I think you've just lost any credibility you had here. I don't like it != nothing new is being put out.

*sigh* Norade, just give up, you're in a debate you can't win and its really getting the thread off topic.

Would a mod mind changing the thread title to 'Your best single player (I.E. campaign) experience'.

In that case I can throw out Space Rangers 2; the first game where I didn't die or get bored before I broke out of the early game. My ninja-looting fuelled Coalition research programs, sped the progress of technological development and built squadron after squadron of battleships. The response of the gameworld to everything you're able to do when you're swimming in money was fantastic.

General Zod wrote:

Norade wrote: Yeah, maybe, but so many games today don't bring anything new to the table. They're just Gears Reskins, two weapons with health regen = realistic, or lol Mass Effect boring as shit RPGs. I'm not saying there weren't a ton of shit games back when the NES and SNES were hot shit, but entire genres were still being born then. Now there's rarely anything new that wows me and games cost so much to make I'm not sure if we're ever going to get back to the days when games were actually fresh.

Yeah, I think you've just lost any credibility you had here. I don't like it != nothing new is being put out.

So press button to hug cover and regenerating health instead of medpacks are innovations now? Call me when they do something that's actually new instead of us just dealing with developers that steal ideas from each other in a circle jerk of mediocrity.