The Best Damn Game EVER

[Kane Starkiller]

Deus EX.
The things that drew me in were:
1. Level design-I'm not talking about pretty graphics but the fact that into every building there are 3-4 different entryways each testing a different skill or an augmentation which increases replayability.
2. Music-Other than Unreal the best music soundtrack in my opinion.
3. Story- Not necessarily it's premise which really combines a huge variety of conspiracy theories but it's execution in the game.
4. Large number of side quests which though not comparable in number to a true RPG game are each far more thought out and immersive than those in an average RPG game where side quests look more as if they were computer generated.

Then there is Unreal and Freespace 2.
Interestingly both Unreal 2 and Deus Ex 2 suffer from same limitations compared to their predecessors: inferior music, while graphics are better the actual level design is worse, enemies are designed badly (compare military bot from Deus Ex1 with that of sequel or the way Skaarj moved in Unreal with the way they move in the sequel). With Deus Ex there is also the simplification of the augmentation/skills system which further kills the game.

[Stargate Nerd]

Super Mario Land

Quality/innovation - Well the game wasn't really innovative, as most of what it did had been done before on the NES. Still the game had a different formula from the "big" Mario games, which included submarine+airplane levels which made it "refreshing" enough. Dunno if that would qualify as innovation here.
Quality on the other hand was great, the game was hard but fair, it had thought out levels with secret passages and different settings every three levels or so.
10/10

Graphics/sound - The Game was never that pretty, although Nintendo did a heck of a job on the Gameboy platform. As for sound quality, well it was stereo if you used ear buds, aside from that I really dug the background music.
7/10

Fun Factor - My sister and I absolutely loved this game and took turns playing it on our Gameboy. I remember my friends liking it as well.
10/10

Replayability - I must have beat the game a hundred times. So for me personally with had very high replayability.
9/10

Learning Curve - One button to jump, one button to run. Doesn't get easier than that. The first few levels are easy enough, so you can get familiar with the controls. The game does become harder with each level that you beat, so the Game Over music will probably ingrain itself into your memory when you first start playing.
8/10

Immersion - Tatanka captured Princess Daisy and Mario has to get here back. Not much story to be found here. The game still captivated me though.
7/10

[Twoyboy]

King's Bounty by New World

The precursor to HoMM which I played for years on my Amiga 500 before I got a PC. I'm not going to rank it the way these games are ranked because by today's standards graphics are shit and playability, despite 4 classes and 4 difficulties, was shot due to the maps never changing.

However, it was amazingly fun, amazingly addictive and pretty much shaped my love for this type of game (I love the HoMM franchise) to this day. I even downloaded a freeware DOS version so I could play it sometimes... despite having still not completed HoMM V due to being distracted by family duties.

[VF5SS]

God Hand

Quality: 10/10 This game is fucking awesome. It's the best beat em up ever. Hokuto no Ken style generic thugs attack you and you kick their asses with kung fu and then you kung fu some demons. It's awesome.

Graphics: 8/10 It uses the Resident Evil 4 engine and does alright. It looks good. The setting is awesome.

Fun factor: 10/10 Beating up generic thugs is awesome. The number of ways you can do it is even more awesome.

Replayability: 10/10 Just keep coming back to beat up more generic thugs.

[Stark]

King's Bounty by New World

The precursor to HoMM which I played for years on my Amiga 500 before I got a PC. I'm not going to rank it the way these games are ranked because by today's standards graphics are shit and playability, despite 4 classes and 4 difficulties, was shot due to the maps never changing.

However, it was amazingly fun, amazingly addictive and pretty much shaped my love for this type of game (I love the HoMM franchise) to this day. I even downloaded a freeware DOS version so I could play it sometimes... despite having still not completed HoMM V due to being distracted by family duties.

I loved this game on Genesis, and my extraordinary disdain for the HoMM series is basically due to how little they improved on King's Bounty. The format avoided the 'whoops you built your city wrong and automatically lose' and 'whoops you lost a battle and automatically lose the game' elements from HoMM.