Any platform(s).
- Disco Elysium
- Jade Empire
- Eternal Darkness
- Knights of the Old Republic
- Starcraft 2
- Quake
- Chrono Trigger
- Portal
- Resident Evil 4
- The Last of Us
- Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress 2 Classic
- A Story About My Uncle
- Minecraft
- Satisfactory
- Portal, Portal 2
- Half-Life, 2, 2 Episode 1, 2 Episode 2
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Quake
- Portal Stories: Mel
- Tempest
The portals are so much fun, even as a group activity.
The Half Life, Portal, and Left 4 Dead series’s bring me nostalgia like no others. Unbelievably good games
Hmm, tough choices. In no particular order.
The Legend of Zelda - A Link To The Past This game was great when it was released and it’s great now, and thanks to the randomiser community it’s now infinitely replayable as well.
Super Metroid A series that literally helped define a genre, Super Metroid was everything that I suspect they wanted Metroid and Return of Samus to be but the hardware couldn’t keep up. The world is built for speed running as well with so many shortcuts that experienced players can utilise, and again, with the randomiser community making it infinitely replayable (not only on its own, but with a crossover with ALTTP!), this game easily makes it onto my list.
Final Fantasy VII My original introduction to JRPGs and a game whose story and mechanics still hold up today even if the graphics don’t as much. Obviously a lot of people feel the same way thanks to the Remakes, which while slightly out there have had so much nostalgia to play through them.
Final Fantasy XI The original Final Fantasy MMORPG and my introduction to MMORPGs generally, I put about 10 years into this game and still to this today occasionally reinstall it and see where I was last up to.
Final Fantasy XIV I tried several times to start FFXIV, but never got past the first few dungeons until COVID lockdowns hit, and since then am fully on board. The story, while a slow burn, is so good, and being a live service game means there’s always new content coming or changes to learn. But really, the story in FFXIV is easily good enough to qualify as a mainline FF title, and any FF players who haven’t tried it yet, should.
Doki Doki Literature Club You have to play this blind. Don’t watch a let’s play, and avoid any spoilers if you can. It’s worth it. But when it’s all done, if you’re playing on PC, people have written entirely new mods and story for it, and the good ones really know how to make you connect with the characters.
Persona 5 Royal I discovered the Persona series with Golden, and was super excited to play Persona 5 when it released, but Royal is the definitive version that you’ll want to play. The story is great, the gameplay is lots of fun, and the combination of JRPG and slice of life makes you feel a lot more connected to the loveable cast.
Factorio Just perfectly tickles that itch for resource management. The factory must grow.
Metal Gear Solid 2 A main memory I have of this game is the first time playing it where I bought out a whole box of those chocolates they sell for fundraising - was supposed to sell them to other people but they were great for late night snacking while I played. The stealth, the tension, the weird everything towards the end, it was a trip from start to finish.
Duke Nukem 3D Duke wasn’t my first foray into FPS games (Wolfenstein 3D manages that title). But it holds a special place in my heart as it was the first game I ever played online multiplayer on. But I did it before the internet, so literally had a modem to modem connection running over an IPX network. Realistically, there’s been plenty of better FPS games since, both modern and classic, but the irreverent humour, plus the fact I was a teen who probably wasn’t supposed to be playing a game with strippers and highly pixilated tits in it, just edges it into my top 10.
If you like DDLC, you should try Song of Saya. Just a warning, it can get quite graphic, but the storytelling is amazing.
Also Chrono Trigger if you’re a Final Fantasy fan.
Chrono Trigger have played and loved as well, but it’s not one I’ve gone back to and replayed, which was one of my key criteria in this list, longevity (for me - I realise Chrono Trigger does have it between the multiple endings and New Game+ mode).
I have a very distinct memory of first playing it via emulator on ZSNES, and running into a bug in a section in the future that required you to hold L and R and activate some controls to open a door. For whatever reason the emulator wasn’t handling that properly and I got stuck. Eventually went back to it on Snes9x and was able to progress, but that stuck out.
Haven’t heard of Song of Saya though, thanks for the recommendation!
I don’t think an emulator bug (especially from a 90s emulator) should factor into how good a game is.
I’d recommend giving it another shot. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, and the only game I find myself replaying every year.
Oh, sorry, please don’t read it that way! It’s a game I very much enjoyed when I played it, and I do still today watch speed runners race it occasionally. The bug didn’t impact my enjoyment of it in the longer term, it’s just a fun fact I remember about it from when I did play it all those years ago that I thought I’d share.
Ah. Makes sense. The early days of emulators were something I really enjoyed. One of the reasons I even got into computers was ZSNES (although glitching Pokemon 1st gen was another)
I love how you can tell how old someone is by their favorite final fantasy games :)
You’re right, you really can. That being said if it’s purely personal favourites I’d put FF6 into that list as well. I would love if they gave that the Remake treatment.
Same! FF6 is so damn good
Solitaire and SkiFree.
sly 3
mirror’s edge
also portal 2 somewhere in there
In no particular order:
- Elden Ring
- Team Fortress 2
- Day of the Tentacle
- Freelancer
- FTL
- System Shock 2
- Duck Game
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Rome: Total War
- Diablo 2
Day of the Tentacle is one of my first PC gaming memories. My friend’s brother had a PC that could play it, and I was in awe. I remember he had to uninstall it to make room for Duke Nukem 3d…
Have you played Wing Commander: Privateer? It predates Freelancer by a bit but it hit a lot of the same notes for me.
Half-life.
Sim city.
Smb3.
I know you don’t mean super monkey ball 3, but, there is the smallest chance you do. :)
In no particular order:
- Star Craft: Brood War
- Diablo II
- Half Life
- Counter Strike
- Homeworld
- Heretic
- GTA Vice City
- Quake 2 (and 3)
- Star Wars Battlefront
- Battlefield 2
I bet our birthdays are pretty close to one another’s.
Yeah I’m showing my age here. lol
Youngins. Did you never even meet Wirt?
Metal Gear Solid 1
Cyberpunk 2077
Civilization V
Gods Will Be Watching
Portal
Splinter Cell Blacklist
Dead Cells
Sniper Elite 3
Dirt Rally
Ghost of Tsushima
I was so close to putting Dead Cells on my list, but I opted for Hades instead. Dead Cells is so damned good, though.
- Outer Wilds
- Hollow Knight
- Elden Ring
- Baldurs Gate 3
- Metroid Prime
- Mass Effect 2
- Tetris
- Shadow of The Colossus
- Mother 3
- Fallout: New Vegas
Based on an incomplete sampling.
I’m probably a little biased but… (I’ll also include my fave music track from each game as a little bonus!)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Not in order:
- Outer Wilds
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Metal Gear Solid
- Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- Super Metroid
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Fallout: New Vegas
- Stardew Valley
- Undertale
- Starcraft
Dang. This is almost my list as well, and the ones that are different I can totally see why they could be on someone else’s list. I like your taste in games.
Is Obra Dinn that good? I started it but only played for about an hour. If it’s on your top 10 I might have to give it another look.
I love Obra Dinn, but not top 10 love. I think the fresh style in an industry of samey games using the same few engines made it really stand out for me. It’s retro styled, but also goes beyond that to show you it’s world in a new way.
If the art style doesn’t do it for you then you might not enjoy it as much.
Subjectively I’d say definitely yes. I adore cerebral games with interesting stories to tell, and this one has that plus a ton of mystery at its core (mystery is maybe my favorite genre of any fiction). The art style can be a little hard for some to get behind, but if you enjoy similar themes & game elements it’s a phenomenal game that will live in your head rent-free for awhile after you’ve finished. It’s one of only maybe three games I’ve ever legitimately referred to as a masterpiece (one of the others being Outer Wilds).
I’m a pretty casual gamer, so I’ve pretty much only played the “hits” a few years after they’ve been out.
These are the ones I remember feeling the most groundbreaking and spending the most time with over the years.
- Doom 2
- GTA San Andreas
- Yakuza 0
- Last of Us
- Zelda: Link to the Past
- Duke Nukem 3D
- Carmageddon 2
- Eternal Darkness
- Red Dead 2
- Metal Gear
I got a good laugh out of the other post that is all the Yakuza games, because that’s how I spent a ton of my Covid work from home time playing them on the cheap. They had the fun of the GTA games, but I never like the main characters were bad people, so Yakuza gave me the games I’ve wanted through all the GTA years and then some.
Aww man. I remember playing lots of LAN DN3D in highschool, after hours in the computer lab. Sometimes an idiot kicked out the BBC cable from one of the ring-topology connected PCs by accident, interrupting fun for everybody.
I used to be a top dog, until some first grader snot nosed kid started playing with M+KB at the same time, sniping all of us keyboard turners with the shotgun on the american football arena map.
Surprised I had to scroll this far to see DooM 2. Guess I’m getting old.
Right?! I saw new Doom on here which I haven’t played, but the lack of people listing Doom 1 and 2 on here is pretty surprising, esp as the Lemmy crowd seems to skew older.
I took a minute to pick between 1 and 2, but 2 felt bigger and I felt I spent more time with it, at least unmodded.
Oh shoot, I forgot the original Deus Ex too! I don’t know if I saw that on here anywhere either. Just too much gold for only 10 picks. I was sad I had to bump off American Magee’s Alice as well.
Just the ones I know, of course. In the order I fell in love with them:
- Combat
- Duke Nukem
- Herzog Zwei
- Streets of Rage 2
- Mario Kart
- Outpost
- Sim City 2000
- Warcraft 2
- Unreal Tournament 2004
- Halo
Darn that’s ten and it only gets me up to two decades ago, when I was ending college.
My ten from after college:
- FarCry 2
- EVE Online
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Minecraft
- Grand Theft Auto V online mode
- Factorio
- Battlefield 5
- Sea of Thieves
- Space Engineers
- Overwatch 2
- Neverwinter Nights
- Kingdom of Amalur
- Warcraft III: Frozen Throne
- Battle for Middle Earth
- Deux Ex
- KOTOR I
- Morrowind - Oblivion
- Red Alert 2
- XCOM2
- WH: Total War II
