What are the best games ever made.

[Tweed]

Instead of replying to a ****-souled, niggerbastard's bait thread, how about an actual thread of what the best games are. The best designed, the genre-definers, the personal favorites.

Dungeon Keeper is one of my personal favorites and one of the best designed games. Way back before Peter Molyneux's ideas all started to stink, or before he lost the crack programmer team behind him one or the other. It's actually quite a bit of fun to play multiplayer if a bit unbalanced. To this day every single effort to try and replicate Dungeon Keeper has always been a pale imitator. War for the Overworld is alright, but was obviously designed with multiplayer and faster games in mind, not the micromanagement or general disregard for balance that DK had.

[Lich]

90s Magic The Gathering. Elegant, evocative, and deep. Forge for computer games.

[Tweed]

Had a friend to who tried to get me into it, but I didn't see the appeal at the time. Last I checked now there's cards for literally every character for every franchise that ever existed.

[asf]

card games are garbage

[sheet]

The kid who had the biggest collection of MTG cards at my middle school had Aspergers or something. He kept obsessively asking people to join the Pen15 club and wanting to write it on people's hands. One time a teacher had to tell him to calm down and shut up, so then he sat at his desk with his head down in his arms for a solid 20 minutes before he suddenly bolted out of the classroom. Turns out he ran out of the building and onto the highway before they were able to wrangle him.
Anyway, that's the first impression Magic left on me.

To the thread, personal choices would be:

Deus Ex for the overall feel and experience, and the personal preference for playstyle and decisions.

Half-Life for the versatility and openness of the engine, and for having an engine where it's mostly "what you see is what you get", with very little invisible walls, odd aiming mechanics, etc. Being the basis for Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, Day of Defeat, Sven Co-op, and some obscure mods I played like Existence gave the game so much longevity. I even made a custom CS map that was basically a 2fort variation translated into Counter-Strike. It was awful, but that's no fault of the tools.

WarCraft 3, just being a great game that inserted plot with strategy, and introducing tons of fun custom games with its map engine.

Other favorites: Diablo II, Dota 2, Alpha Centauri, F-Zero GX, SSX Tricky (or SSX3), Tropico 4, SimCity 4, Railroad Tycoon II, Factorio.

[Lich]

Had a friend to who tried to get me into it, but I didn't see the appeal at the time. Last I checked now there's cards for literally every character for every franchise that ever existed.

The quality of the game has been declining for more than 20 years. Throwback formats like 93/94 and premodern are closer to the original spirit of the game.

[J1M]

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[fork]

Had a friend to who tried to get me into it, but I didn't see the appeal at the time. Last I checked now there's cards for literally every character for every franchise that ever existed.

The quality of the game has been declining for more than 20 years. Throwback formats like 93/94 and premodern are closer to the original spirit of the game.

And unaffordable to get into.

[DemoGraph]

Had a friend to who tried to get me into it, but I didn't see the appeal at the time. Last I checked now there's cards for literally every character for every franchise that ever existed.

The quality of the game has been declining for more than 20 years. Throwback formats like 93/94 and premodern are closer to the original spirit of the game.

And unaffordable to get into.

That's why you play it in Lackey or Vassal or some other virtual board.

The quality of the game has been declining for more than 20 years.

I once trawled through every card of every set looking at great cards, that is, both evocative and mechanically interesting. After about Invasion there were very few notable blocks (basically Ravnica and Lorwyn).

[DecadeRiptide]

Halo is really good, especially Halo 5. Really loved thst game. The graphics and gameplay mechanics were on point. Music was awesome too, and the characters were memorable. Really good game, highly recommend.

Also relooted was a really good game that came out recently. Not as good as dustborn but was up there. Really recommend giving it a go.

[Vlajdimir Ermenović]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category: ... _in_Poland

[Val the Moofia Boss]

World of Warcraft: Western Artbook fantasy game with +20 years of high fantasy zones, cities, transmogs, mounts, enchants, elixirs, toys, etc to visually augment your charact with. Highest quality and quantity of varied playable races with broad shouldered hunched over orcs, hulking inhuman beastmen tauren, hunched over skeletons, alien but noble Draenei, etc. Grandiose 25 man raid fights with elaborate mechanics. Huge OST with several hundred great tracks. Funnest flying mount system I have seen in a game. Robust player housing tools. Responsive netcode. Etc.

Sakura Wars series: combination of VN and SRPG. Charming aesthetic and setting with the romantic Taisho era and cool steampunk/magitek mechs. Likeable characters. The VN sections are much more engaging than your usual VN due to the timed dialogue choices, and gameplay elements such as having to take a picture within a certain amount of time, or having to correctly recall the color of a dress earlier that day making you stick up straight in your chair and pay attention. The same dev team would go on to produce Valkyria Chronicles, which has the same battle system. SW5 is the direct precursor to VC1 and has the most well done mission design.

Valkyria Chronicles 1 & 4

Pokemon Sapphire: gives off the feeling of adventure of bushwhacking through a dense marsh or rainforest during a thunderstorm while your supplies are running out, groping through huge labyrinthine caves, or exploring the ocean or its trenches.

Pokemon Omega Ruby Sapphire: the above game (albeit easier and with a washed out color palette) but with a humongous roster of mons and cool mega evolutions.

World End Economica: VN trilogy written by Isuna Hasekura (the author of Spice & Wolf) about a stock trader on the moon who gets embroiled in a conspiracy, and a romance plot. Is the tightest VN I have ever read, no padding or filler. The climaxes had me on the edge of my seat, and the author explains well the economics and what's going on.

Granblue Fantasy: produced by ex-Final Fantasy talent, this is a Final Fantasy game with 12 years of full voice acted VN stories, many of which were quite enjoyable to go through. Cool setting and likeable characters. Also great art and music. Does not require any grinding to experience.

Aselia the Spirit of Eternity Sword: VN/SRPG hybrid accompanied by Aki Hata's stellar soundtrack which gives it a palpable sense of melancholy. The protagonist Yuuto and his little sister get isekaied to a fantasy world where they are promptly captured by the local country (who speak a different language Yuuto cannot understand). They enslave him, bind him to a demonic sword, and force him to lead a minority squad to conquer other countries, using his sister as blackmail. Also, his demon sword keeps trying to tempt him. The gameplay sections are a hybrid of 4x as you conquer settlements and build fortifications and facilities on them. Ties the resource management gameplay into the story very well near the end.

Trails of Cold Steel I & 2: an extremely story heavy 200 hour long adventure about a young man who gets caught up in the turmoil affecting his country during a cold war with a loaming antagonistic republic, and civil unrest. Cool nobles wearing cravats practicing special family swordsmanship styles in their dojo, romantic castles and rolling hills, airships and mechs, and so on. Humongous cast of characters where almost everyone is likeable. Engaging combat and character building. The mech duels are very climatic. Great soundtrack. Above average English dub. Fantastic PC port by Durante.

Shadow of the Colossus: a foolish young man makes a deal with the devil to resurrect his lost love. The game has a melancholic and grandiose feel as you gallop across a humongous, desolate wasteland inhabited only by you, your horse, the birds overhead, and the colossi you are currently hunting. The 16 colossi fights (except for maybe the 2 bull fights) are well designed in that they are slow paced/generous enough that you do not have to wipe over and over to figure out the solution.

Star Fox 64: is a fun, tight 2 hour long adventure. Feels like you played through an awesome movie.

Final Fantasy IX: a tight, action packed adventure through beautifully rendered artbook fantasy world. For the first 2 discs and first few hours of disc 3, you are constantly visiting new cool towns or cities which then promptly explode. Juggles and interweaves between a large cast of characters with their different stories. Good soundtrack by Uematsu.

Final Fantasy X: you get to go on an adventure through a unique Far-East Asian island themed fantasy world. Has the closest feeling of travelling with the Fellowship from LotR. Each character has a unique gameplay niche, like Tidus being fast enough to hit fast enemies like wolves, Auron being able to shatter heavy armor, Wakka and Lulu being able to hit flying enemies, Yuna being able to heal and summon Aeons to tank for the party, Yuna and Lulu being able to utilize the different elements to target enemy weaknesses, etc.

Final Fantasy XI: gives off the feel of being in a vast, simulated fantasy world with an economy, many other adventurers, high level heroes and threats to aspire too. Mobs after level 10 are too difficult to solo by yourself, necessitating a party, which makes mobs feel threatening, and also binds players together. Combat is low APM so you have time to chat and shoot the breeze.

Final Fantasy XIV: 500+ hour long story in which your customizeable character gets to be the star. Lots of different jobs and armor sets to pick from (though nowhere near as much variety as WoW). Writing and presentation is overall very good (the standouts being the geopolitical conflicts in the first half of the story, and the ShB expansion). English dub starts off meh, but by Heavensward they moved the voice studio to London, recasted everyone by British theater and film actors, and the dub becomes really good.

Guild Wars 2: you get to go on a fun 200+ hour long globe trotting adventure where every 2 to 3 hours, you get to visit a brand new cool high fantasy zone. Has fun platforming and action feel. You can play as a hulking inhuman beastman Charr who automatically runs on all fours when out of combat. Some cool elite specs.

Minecraft: survival MC (back in the day when the game first came out, before villages were added) had this really melancholic feel of you being the only man in the world. C418's moody music really helped with that. Otherwise, it was fun being able to tour through other people's crazy builds, or joining Hunger Games servers (battle royale) on crazy maps.

Spore: you can create and slowly expand your creature, taking him from a little cell and getting bigger and bigger and more detailed. This is the only RPG in which you can add multiple limbs to your character or make him look inhuman. You can also use the editor to make your own buildings and vehicles.

Space Cowboy Online/ACE Online/Air Rivals: faction war MMO where you play as a fighter pilot on a colonized alien planet. Each month, the players elect their chairman/general, and on the weekends they participated in huge offensives against the enemy capital city involving thousands of players. During the week, the three guild outposts would become vulnerable to attack, and both factions would surge there and get embroiled in a huge battle to try to secure the outpost for a guild on their faction too. Cool Gundam SEED anime fantasy sci fi aesthetic.

Suikoden 1 and 2: first game has you go through a tight, 15 hour long heavy war story in which you can fill your 6 man party with your favorite characters from a humongous roster. The sequel is diluted, with hardly any meaningful deaths over 40 hours, but was still engaging to go through, and elevates the art. Great soundtrack by Miki Higashino.

Mount & Blade Warband: you get to start as a lone guy, recruit a few other ruffians, go do low level quests or enlist in a lord's army and follow him on campaign, slowly amass more skills/wealth/men, become a low ranking lord with a small fief, win more, build businesses, eventually become powerful enough to strike out on your own and start your own kingdom, slowly expand, and eventually take over the world. Provided me hundreds of hours of fun.

I had a lot of fun playing Star Citizen during the first few years when the servers went up. It was quite something to be able to step out of your hab on Port Olisar, run downstairs to the lobby, spawn your ship, run out the airlock, press a button on the exterior to open up the doors, climb in side, sit down in the chair, power up the ship, take off, warp across the system to another planet, fly down and experience atmospheric reentry, fly over a forest, fly to a bustling city, hail the spaceport authority so they could open the hanger doors, gently ease down and land, get out, take a tram ride to the city, walk around and look at everything, etc. Unfortunately, the game became worse and worse to play.

I am going to second @J1M's suggestion of Hearthstone. I played for the first couple years and had a lot of fun. It was very polished and had neat visual effects and generally looked good, and the game was very coherent and easy to understand. TCGs often have an issue where they are not easy to pick up or are unintuitive, but HS avoided that. Unfortunately, by the time of the Goblins vs Gnomes expansion, it was becoming P2W and if you weren't paying to get the meta cards like Doctor Boom or meta decks like Deathrattle, you would be in for a bad time. The Grand Tournament expac was the last straw for me.

Heroes of the Storm: spent a couple years super into this. Like with Hearthstone, this was finally a MOBA I could get into, because it didn't have weird esoteric crap like last hitting or having to funnel EXP into one guy or needing to have a PHD and know everything before you begin playing or else you get flamed. You could just pick whichever character looked cool, jump in, and have a good time. There were a wide variety of maps both in appearance and in layout and objectives to keep things spruced up. I quite enjoyed maining Abathur.

Overwatch: was pretty fun during the first couple years. There are a lot of different characters both in looks and in playstyle. I wound up becoming an Ana main when she came out. I struggle to think of any other playable old women in games. She had a good voice actress (she voices Venari in WoW!), and I liked being able to both heal and also shoot people.

[rusty_shackleford]

The best designed, the genre-definers,

Ultima Underworld

1. Yes, it is.
2. The number of games that have had as big/bigger impact on the industry than UU are small, basically the mainline Ultima games, Wizardry, DOOM, etc., Ultima Underworld was the first RPG that tried to actually simulate a world as one of its goals, and still one of the very few.

Only problem with it is, like most 3D dos games/pre-accelerated games, the low FPS 3D gives me motion sickness.
Lossless Scaling's frame generation lets me play it without getting sick

[Tweed]

Lossless Scaling's frame generation lets me play it without getting sick

[rusty_shackleford]

Lossless Scaling's frame generation lets me play it without getting sick

It causes the opposite of disgust tho

[The_Mask]

I'm going to try to emulate Jim with trying to dedicate 1 good game per year, but I don't think I can match the autism. Or can I?

1. STREET ROD (1989)
This was probably my first encounter with American culture. It wasn't just about being #1 in every race, it was about knowing your car, shifting the gears in such a way that your car would rush ahead, taking care of your car (wheels, fine tuning, making sure it's clean) and most importantly:
- don't drink and drive, bub
- and getting the cute girl at the end

2. LOTUS (1990)
The LOTUS racing series was some of the best racing games back in the early 1990's. OGs will know what I'm taking about.

3. PINBALL FANTASIES (1991)
The DIGITAL ILLUSIONS logo became iconic just for this. PARTY LAND was released shareware, but that didn't stop its fame. It was a near perfect Pinball Simulator. Back when bosses would let you install a game on your computer at work "to have something to have fun with while on break). It was great.
Billion Dollar Gameshow is still one of my favourite tables.

4. SCORCHED EARTH (1992)
Possibly one of the best video games of all time, Scorched Earth was SO MUCH FUN. It's still fun even today *and* it will teach you artillery.

5. WOLFENSTEIN 3d (1993)
Mecha Hitler.

6. STREET FIGHTER 2 (I can't remember when this one came out)
Super-popular. Every arcade had it. Every kid wanted to play it against another kid that he secretly wanted to beat up irl, but couldn't because the adults were watching. XD

7. HOCUS POCUS (1994)
One of the best plaformers of all time, right up there with COMMANDER KEEN. I liked this one more because of the Tolkien-esque vibe. You had the wise old sage. The beautiful blonde love interest. The ugly magic monkeys to shoot down. It was great!

8. WARCRAFT 2: TIDES OF DARKNESS (1995)
Lessons: you can never have too few peons and you can never have enough gold.

9. AGE OF EMPIRES (1997)
WWWWOOOOOOLOLOL... LOLOLOOOOOOOOOOOOO~!

10. DUNGEON KEEPER (1) (1997)
The first game where I felt a bit overwhelmed. I figured every mechanic out to only find out from my mates that there are secret levels that you can unlock on a full moon. I think this was the first game where "things got better with friends" and I think it is now one of the few that actually pushed that without an ulterior financial or propagandistic motive.

11. StarCraft, Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and Fallout 2.
My childhood. Basically. I think I know each of these games by heart. What a time to be alive it was back then.

12. Planescape: Torment
(if you need me to tell you why this one is good, then that's a you problem)

I'll write some more after other people have had their say. I think 12 bullet points is what most people can take in 1 post before they quit paying attention.

[J1M]

Some classic games that were released in crowded years:

Axes and Acres
(solo Civilization board game with dice and card elements)

Anno 1404
(franchise peak)

Deus Ex Human Revolution
(still think they leaked the start of the game because they knew it was hot **** compared to everything else in 2011)

Peggle
(fun, and more skill based than you would think)

Pathfinder Adventures
(card game with persistent character growth via deck building)

Opus Magnum
(best Zachitronics game)

Uplink
(best hacking game that doesn't involve actual coding)

Ikaruga
(as much bullet hell as I can tolerate)

[maidenhaver]

Rome Total War. Caesar was Good, the patricians were gay.

[Tweed]

Deus Ex Human Revolution
(still think they leaked the start of the game because they knew it was hot **** compared to everything else in 2011)

I was definitely not a believer until I tried the leak.

[DecadeRiptide]

- the killing antidote