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Despite their issues the Civilization games are some of my favorites, and the original Civilization Call to Power has a special place in my heart. Too bad I couldn't seem to get it to install on XP.

Despite being incredibly hard, I loved X-Com; the original, I never cared too much for the others in the franchise.

I also loved a little game called Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, even though it was a bit buggy.

Just trying some of the Total War games and Galactic Civilizations, so I really can't rate them yet.

Stark wrote:Fifty five games? Seriously?

TIE was cool, but for me it's like System Shock. It sucks now. Starcon and Thief and WiC are still awesome.

The game mechanics behind Tie-Fighter is essentially the same mechanics behind X-Wing and X-Wing Alliance. I enjoyed all of them. As I noted, some of the games are partially out of nostalgia. But they were games I spent a great many hours playing and replaying and have nothing but fond memories of.

I would end up with a list as massive as Alyeska's, so I'll settle for my all-time favourtie per genre (nostalgia being accounted for too):

Shooter: DooM (original series)
Role-Playing: Fallout (original series)
Graphic Adventure: Grim Fandango
Action/Adventure: Psychonauts
Tacticool: GRAW
Stealth: Hitman series
Racing: Trackmania United
Puzzle: World of Goo
Fighting: Samurai Showdown series
Beat'em Up: Aliens vs Predator
Platformer: Metroid (the first trilogy), although Aquaria is making me reconsider.
Strategy: Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Shadow of Death
Sports: Rayman - Raving Rabbids
Scary: Penumbra
Sandbox: Saints Row 2
Flight: The helicopters on Desert Combat (yeah, yeah, I know, but I have tons of fun flying them)

Yay for making up more genres so I can end up with a longer list!

Space Combat:

Independence War 2. Honorable mention: Freespace 2. Pure nostalgia: X-Wing/Tie Fighter

Flight Simulation:

Il-2 Sturmovik. Honorable mention: MiG Alley. Pure nostalgia: Red Baron (original 1991 version)

Grand strategy / 4x:

Europa Universalis 2. Honorable mention: Civilization 2. Pure nostalgia: Master of Orion

War / Military strategy:

The Operational Art of War series. Honorable Mention: Steel Panthers series. Pure nostalgia: Gary Grigsby's Pacific War

I haven't been playing as much as I used to after about 2002, but on the other hand there have been relatively few new titles in my favorite genres. Perhaps I should at least try Civ 4, but on the other hand now that Civ 5 is on its way... I used to play shooters, too, but I am so badly antiquated in that field that I will give only my Pure nostalgia choice: Duke Nukem 3D.

Homeworld for me was one of the best games I've ever played. Console wise I've lost a lot of time to Fable 2 on the X-Box 360 and on the PS2 the game I lost most hours to was Onimusha.

Descent 3. I'd still play it if I had a working joystick.

These always make me feel really old....

ok still in my possession and played:
"Gold Box SSI AD&D on Dos Box"- Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Asure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, Champions of Krynn, Deathknights of Krynn, Buck Rodgers Countdown, Buck Rodgers Matrix Cubed.
Civ-II (the best Civ version)
SMAC+X (Still played frequently)
Fallout&fallout2 (there is no tactics)
MoO2 (There is no MoO3)
X-Com (Plus Terror)
Scorched Earth (isn't dos box good)
Dune

Fallout 3
BF: Bad Company 2 (I love the multiplayer)
GTA: Vice City
Tie Fighter
Bully
WWF No Mercy
Ace Combat 5
The 7th Guest
Grim Fandango
Bionic Commando (360 and original)
Star Wars Battlefront 2
BattleToads
Destroy All Humans

Pfft, y'all had entirely too much money sitting around in the last 2 decades... I had to thread a much more frugal needle through gameboy handhelds, an SNES (when PS1 was king), N64 and finally PS2... until I got a job.

All time favorites:
* Final Fantasy III / 6
* Star Wars: Racer
* Ring of Red
* Starcraft
* CoD:UO

Note: Red Alarm (Virtualboy!) had good music and the most stressful boss fight I've played in any game. Oddly, it's the 2nd-to-last boss. The Donkey Kong that came out on Gameboy ... had the 2nd most nerve wracking level I've played in any game. You swam away from a cuddlefish for what seems like 5 minutes straight. If it touched you you died and had to start all over of course.

Not relevant, just bitching since we're digging up old memories: My brother and I got every car in Gran Turismo 3 and our friend later saved over the file on accident... he had something like nowhere near the progress.

On the Amiga, F/A-18 Interceptor and Frontier : First Encounters. Spent a ridiculous amount of time playing those, though obviously they look very primitive now. To a lesser extent, Hired Guns, Turrican 2, Pinball Fantasies and Cannon Fodder.

On the PC, Planescape : Torment and System Shock 2 stand a head and shoulders above everything else. Runners up; Civilisation 2, Warcraft 3, Baldur's Gate 2, Grim Fandango, Duke Nukem 3D, Star Control 2, C&C: Red Alert and Carmageddon.

On consoles, Ace Combat 5 (4 was nearly as good), GTA : Vice City (SA was also very good) and Half Life 2. I also really liked Tekken 2, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Soul Calibur 3, Saints Row 2, Fallout 3, Bioshock and Mass Effect 2. Oh and I guess Twilight Princess, I personally thought that was far superior to Ocarina of Time despite all the fanboy whining.

I enjoyed a lot of games on first playthrough, but those were the games that really sucked me in and that I came back to again and again.

Red Alarm

Oh dude, our lecturer brought in a Virtual Boy with that and Mario Tennis during one of our tutorials. I saw the logo and went "THEY MADE COMMAND & CONQUER FOR VB?! FUCK YEAH!" then I fire it up and it's this fucking crappy shooter trying it's hardest to do vector graphics. When it does that 3D rotation shit at the start with your ship, my eyes started fucking bleeding.

SPC Brungardt wrote:Ring of Red

I believe I've played this game on my 360 once or twice, it was such a horrible game I sent my console in for a new one.

General Schatten wrote:

SPC Brungardt wrote:Ring of Red

I believe I've played this game on my 360 once or twice, it was such a horrible game I sent my console in for a new one.

I see what you did there....

Starglider wrote:Oh and I guess Twilight Princess, I personally thought that was far superior to Ocarina of Time despite all the fanboy whining.

That's because fanboys are dumb. I had a nagging feeling I was forgetting something in my list, should've put in a Zelda game, meh. I think any number of Zelda games are better than OoT, from Link to the Past to Windwaker.

adam_grif wrote:

Red Alarm

Oh dude, our lecturer brought in a Virtual Boy with that and Mario Tennis during one of our tutorials. I saw the logo and went "THEY MADE COMMAND & CONQUER FOR VB?! FUCK YEAH!" then I fire it up and it's this fucking crappy shooter trying it's hardest to do vector graphics. When it does that 3D rotation shit at the start with your ship, my eyes started fucking bleeding.

I've always thought that a Vectrex would have been a more desirable product than the VB ever was, and had some pretty nice space shooters to boot.

Tentative list of favorite games:

Phantasy Star series
Freespace series, I-War, Klingon Academy
World in Conflict
Operational Art of War series
X-Com
Star Control 2
Starflight series
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade
Battlefield 1942 (with mods)
Homeworld series

Sim City 4: This is a game that's deeply flawed out of the box, and was abandoned by EA after only one expansion. However, thanks to a large and dedicated mod community, there's still new content being released for it, some of it very very good. The learning curve is steep and even with the mods, it has stability problems and annoying limitations (like being stuck on an orthogonal grid), but once you've mastered it, there's no city simulation anywhere that can match it for flexibility or complexity.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Alpha Centauri took everything Civ II did right and added new features which became indispensable in future Civ games. I found it more immersive than Civ II, because of its narrower time period and future setting, which sidestepped the "thousand years to build a granary" problem. Customizing units was great fun and let me tailor an army to my fighting style.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Possibly my favorite game on the SNES console. Every single thing the game tried to do worked. The graphics and sound still hold up today. Maybe I'm just a dinosaur, but I've never gotten the hang of the 3d Zeldas--I much prefer the 3/4 overhead view.

Mario Kart Wii: Just an intensely fun racing game. Ditch the wheel gimmick and play with the Classic controller.

Duke Nukem 3d: I'm pretty sure nostalgia is playing as big a role in this pick as the actual game quality, but I still remember this as my favorite 1st person shooter. The weapon selection was balanced and the enemies were fun, and when I was in 10th grade, the "Bruce Campbell on a budget" protagonist was aces. Mainly I remember playing deathmatch (over a modem) with my friends, pitting my knack for setting traps against their better aim. People learned not to blindly jump down ventilator shafts or through teleporters when they played against me.

In no particular order:-

System Shock: Iconic villain, deeply atmospheric / scary, incredible depth for its time, and trail-blazer in many ways.

Fallout: This is just too obvious for me to have to explain why.

Fallout 2: Again, the same.

Star Control 2: I wagged school (pretended to be sick) to play this game. I was that obsessed.

Wing Commander 3: everyone knows this one.

TIE Fighter: Again, too obvious to have to explain. I think I've played TIE Fighter more times than any other game.

Medieval 2, Total War: My favorite of the series so far, due to the setting.

Baldur's Gate/ Baldur's Gate 2/ Throne of Bhaal: An epic story, great art design, solid gameplay mechanics, appropriate length. A classic. I consider it one game because they all used the same engine and your character could be imported from the original to the sequel with no fuss.

Fallout 3: I've put an ungodly amount of time into this. Unfortunately, I've done everything there is to do and can't continue to play it.

Medieval II: Total War: I need to get a new disc though, since mine got scratched up somehow.

Chromehounds: This was one of the best console online games ever made, but they shut it down back in January. WHY?!

Battlefield: Bad Company 2: One of the best games to play with a group of friends online.

Gears of War 2: There's not much more fun than chainsawing your friends in half, but I still don't get why the fuck the Hammer of Dawn is in multiplayer.

Planescape: Torment - Bad UI, dated graphics and a silly character system, but who cares when the story is this good.

System Shock 2 - The original SS is a bit of a dinosaur nowadays, but the sequel is still excellent. Sure, it has its silly moments (3 years in the military and you don't know how to use an assault rifle?), but the atmosphere is still great. Also, props for co-op mode.

Total Annihilation - Still my favorite RTS. Even though the graphics are clunky and the units are all robots, the battlefield still bizarrely feels more alive than that of most other RTSs. Lots of different units, and for a change air and naval forces are well represented. Great soundtrack. Also, TA is one of the few games from the nineties that actually works without a hitch on modern OSs, and supports resolutions and aspect ratios that no one had even dreamed of at the time the game was published.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - IMO the best Civ game. Not much else to say, really.

Freespace 2 - Best space shooter ever (by a hair's breadth, I might switch this spot to Independence War if I could actually get it to work on my computer ). Does everything better than the X-Wing series. And thanks to the source code project, still keeps getting better.

Torment is my all-time favorite, the rest aren't in any particular order.

Classic-style RTS : Red Alert 3. Shut up, it's fun.
New RTS : Company of Heroes. Absolutely fantastic in every respect.
Shooters : Team Fortress 2. I've been playing it since day 1 and I'm still hooked.
RPG : Mass Effect 2. I don't like looking at how many hours I've put into it.
Retro : Megaman 2. Seriously, it's better than the vast majority of modern games.
Platformer : Psychonaughts. Genuinely hilarious and clever at every turn.
Turn Based Tactics : Advanced War 2 : Black Hole Rising. I played it more or less every day for almost four years. I can still predict battle results in varying terrain on the fly.
Best thing ever : Alpha Centauri. It's amazing.
What is this I don't even : Valkyria Chronicles. Beautiful, addicting, and creative.

If favorite = games I've wasted most of my time during my life, the list should be something like this (in no particular order).

MoO 1 & 2: Brilliant 4X space strategy game on the day it came out, and still managed to get me re-hooked when it was released on GoG.

Transport tycoon deluxe: simply a game that got reinstalled quite a few times during the years. It must be the sound of $rolling money$ that made it addictive

Heroes of Might & Magic: 3 was best but I also had fun with 1 & 2 before that. Very fun playing hotseat pre-internets age.

Diablo 2: Good? Meh, it's allright. Repetitive? Very. Addictive? YESSS (I'm a sucker for item-hunting). Still managed to get me rehooked a while ago.

Total war series: each release managed to get my attention. Vanilla versions are good (ok, they have problems but since they're pretty much the choice on the market...) but with each release you also get a strong modding community behind it so they always have a long lifespan.

X-Com series (1 to 3 in particular): Turn based strategy at its finest. Jagged Alliance should get honorable mention, but X-com had more replay value for me.

Eve-online: the only MMORPG I've ever truly played, and I've played it for years.

Counterstrike: the first online shooter I've played and played it for a long time as well. Still remember the days where my kickass ISDN-line trumped over those 56k-users (elas, the high phonebill I remember as well). Good mods (eg Day of Defeat) gave it an extra shelf life.

RTS: don't make me choose

Halo
Total Annihilation
World in Conflict
Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm (There were only two Homeworld games dammit!)
Red Alert 2
Dawn of War (and DoW II when/if they have a Guard expansion)
Diablo 2
KoToR and 2
FF3 (the steampunk one that's known as FF3 in the US)
Rollercoaster Tycoon (the original one)

Tie Fighter - no, it doesn't hold up well, but it's one of the first games I put countless hours in. I remember actually setting the alarm clock so I would wake up earlier so I'd have more time to play Tie Fighter.

Civ series - From Civ 2 onwards, many, many hours spent on those.

TESIV - Oblivion - played this sucker for ages thanks to mods always keeping it fresh. I was blown away not so much by the mediocre mainquest, but by the overall atmosphere, and I enjoyed the setting and landscape very much.

Lord of the Rings Online - my first MMO, and it was a blast. The game did a really good job capturing the Shire, Bree and all that. But what's even more important, I had a lot of fun with some guys I met in the game. They're all still on my ICQ, we even met in RL, and I've had some of the most gaming-related fun evenings ever with them on teamspeak. As a group we even briefly went on to Age of Conan. I still log on to LotRO from time to time, but starting with the Mines of Moria expansion the game went downhill quick IMO.

Hawkwings wrote:Halo

Halo? Really? I mean, it was one of the first decent console FPSes, but you obviously had a PC and by PC standards it wasn't that impressive.

I agree, Starglider, but it's not really our place to tell people which games aren't allowed to be their all time favorites