Favorite games

[Martok]

Medieval Total War / Viking Invasion: When it comes to the sheer number of hours I've wasted enjoyed playing any particular game, this is almost certainly #1 on my list. The replay value is immense, and is only further enhanced by the many fine mods available.

Star Trek TNG Birth of the Federation: A close second to MTW/VI in terms of how much time I've spent playing it. As a big fan of both Star Trek and strategy games, I was hooked to this one from the start. The atmosphere feels very "Trek-esque" -- in large part due to the fact that each major race (Cardassians, Federation, Ferengi, Klingons, & Romulans) has their own art and UI, as well as their own music. Unfortunately, the game is far from perfect: There are numerous bugs and imbalances in the game, and the AI is pretty poor. Still, it's good enough that I've spent many a game happily taking over the galaxy.

Shogun Total War: It wasn't the first strategy game to combine a turn-based campaign with real-time battles, but it was certainly the first to do so in such an elegant and pleasing fashion. Setting it in feudal Japan was brilliant as well, giving it a somewhat exotic flavor that captured my imagination in a way that no other game has.

Galactic Civilizations 2: Anyone who likes turn-based space strategy titles should pick this one up pronto. It's a deep game, but still accessible enough for new players to pick up as well. The ship design feature will eat up hours of your life, and the AI is some of the best to be found anywhere. I also love the humor that's prevalent throughout the game, particularly in the technology descriptions and many of the diplomatic exchanges with other races.

Lords of the Realm 2: It was the first turn-based strategy game I ever played, and 10 years later it still has a special place in my heart. In contrast to Medieval and Shogun's epic scale, I love LotR 2 for its more personal take on running a kingdom. Managing your agriculture, population, and basic resources (mainly iron, stone, and wood) is made easy via simple sliders; and the battles are simple yet fun. In addition, the game is chock-full of humor -- my favorite bits are the troop's comments in combat and the diplomatic messages from rival nobles.

Command & Conquer Red Alert (1 & 2): Despite my general preference for turn-based strategy games, every now and then I feel the need to just build up a base and go smash my enemies; and these two RTS titles have never failed to satisfy me when I have such urges. With simple, easy-to-understand gameplay and wonderfully campy cutscenes, the Red Alert games are always make for some good old-fashioned twitch-fest tank mashing.

[Veho Nex]

STW

Diablo 2

Civ 3(Just one more turn)

Gangsters 2: Vendetta

Cutthroats

Exile 3

[Decker]

I'm a BIG 64 fan and most of these are from the system(had over 60 games lol and finished about half of 'em):

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Probably one of the most entertaining games that I will ever play. From sneaking into the palace past the guards, to stealing Fiona(or whatever the horse was called) to the insane final battle was one great adventure. Sadly, it took me such a long time to beat(kept going back to places to "mop" them up) that I was never able to play Majora's Mask.

Perfect Dark: One of the most enjoyable fps' that's MP was top notch and a lot of fun for everyone who played, not to mention the great AI.

James Bond: Goldeneye: Do I really need to describe this game?

Mario Kart 64: Where to start? Fantastic levels with crazy races, fast karts, faster bombs, and all those Nintendo characters that you love.

Wave Racer: The first game I ever played that came with the 64 ,and Mario Kart I believe, and a rather difficult one at that (bloody darned waves) with territorial AI.

Starcraft 64: Played this for hours and got about halfway through the "Starcraft" part and just ended up playing skirmish mode which was extremely fun. Now I suck when I play the pc version tho lol. (Never got to see that extra level they added after Brood War )

Fifa 64: Indoor was where it's at. Or was that Fifa '97? One had indoor and it was awesome.

Mario Party: Two words, Mini-Games.

Doom 2(PC): First fps I ever played, and maaan was that a first.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire: Great gameplay, good story line, and one of my favorite adventure games on the 64, tho I'm not sure how many remember that game.

O yea almost forgot Rouge Squadron: "We need to take out those AT-ATs Wedge!"

There's a lot more to mention but these stood out the most.
There was another that had you shooting ants but I forgot it's name, lots of fun, and it had a dog with a lazer on its' back.

For most hated level, I'd have to say the Super Mario World (SNES) star map 2? I think it was... The one where you have to keep eating the balloons to float through the entire level. HATE. Pure, raw, unabating, hatred.

From his post on "Favorite Level", totally just reminded me of Super Mario 64:(how'd I leave that one out?) Fun and very entertaining levels, with lively characters, and some fun side quest for those rainbow stars, the semi roaming ability in between levels and great showdown with Bowser at the end.

[Stig]

Knights and Merchants, certainly not the best game ever made, but it was fun tho
Anno 1602, great fun game
Anno 1701, same but the graphics make it even better
Super Smash Brother Melee, if you played it you know it's good
Excite Truck, great fun Wii game

[frogbeastegg]

Fiona(or whatever the horse was called)

Epona

There was another that had you shooting ants but I forgot it's name, lots of fun, and it had a dog with a lazer on its' back.

Jet Force Gemini by Rare. I loved that game until I beat the ferociously hard boss at the end of Lupus' path and found that I now had to backtrack to every level I'd already complete and save all the teaddy bear things. Gah! You had to get all of them in one swoop through the level or you had to go back and do it all again. I gave up after the second level, bored to death and frustrated with the difficutly of collecting them all.



A few titles off my own list, in no order at all:
Shogun: TW. This game is the reason I started to read about Japanese history.

X Wing and TIE Fighter. I hate to think of how many hours I sunk into this pair. Hundred.

Ocarina of Time. I was spell bound from the moment I saw the demo running in a shop.

Mysteries of the Sith. Jedi Knight's add-on pack, and IMO the best FPS/lightsabre Star Wars game ever. It had incredible level design. The final one, set inside a massive Sith temple, was amazing.

Dragon Quest VIII. Probably my favourite JRPG

Planescape: Torment. The best Western style RPG I've played. Such a wonderful plot and set of characters! Alas, never completed it. I've tried it on several different PCs now and it always drops to a sub 1FPS crawl when I get to UnderSigil, meaning it is unplayable. The most telling thing is that I've tried it on several PCs. Generally I don't replay games.

Thief 1 and 2. Proving that graphics don't equal atmosphere.

Privateer 2: The Darkening. Space trading game with an actual plot, and a good one too. I played this one as relentlessly as TIE Fighter and X-wing back in the day.

System Shock 2. Horror isn't my thing, nor are scary (or 'scary' :looks at Resident Evil series:) games. SS2 was. Oh, how it was.

KOTOR. The first game, not the incomplete, bug ridden second game. I completed this one three times. It captured the Star Wars feel better than the prequel films.

Curse of Monkey Island. The first in the series I played, and as such it always has a special place in my heart. The visual style and music were gorgeous.

Luigi's Mansion. One of the first games I got for my Gamecube. It was, simply, fun.

[Odin]

MTW:Simply because i spent many many hours playing this game.

Hearts of Iron: Same as 1, but in MP.

Conqueror: A.D. 1086: what a truly fine game to play and a joy, it was far from perfect but loads of fun. I spent a lot of time playing this game, I still dont really know why it was just the flip from strategy to first person shooter (well dueler) in the castles that sucked me in.

Multiple Koei games for SNES and Sega: RTK, Genghis Khan, Gemfire, Aerobiz, Unchartered Waters, PTO, Operation Europe, and a few more. I literally played these exclusively (with the exception of Madden) from the late 80's to mid 90's

Adventure: Old school Atari console game but I played it an awful lot, did you? Then you know about the dot....

Madden: yes I play Madden Football have since 1990.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City: Yes I started playing this game after 30, its fantastic, I still play it....

[Decker]

Epona


Jet Force Gemini by Rare. I loved that game until I beat the ferociously hard boss at the end of Lupus' path and found that I now had to backtrack to every level I'd already complete and save all the teaddy bear things. Gah! You had to get all of them in one swoop through the level or you had to go back and do it all again. I gave up after the second level, bored to death and frustrated with the difficutly of collecting them all.

Ahhh, thanks for that one Frog. Yea the backtracking part sucked and I stopped playing it when I had to go through it again. But it was a fun game nonetheless.

[ElectricEel]

*Worms
I played this game with friends for over a decade. It was funny, it required skill, it was often unfair, it was the best 'hotseat' multiplayer game ever.

Absolutely. I own Worms Armageddon and Worms 4 (the latter bought once I started having problems getting Armageddon to work properly on Windows XP).

O yea almost forgot Rouge Squadron: "We need to take out those AT-ATs Wedge!"

I've played the PC version of that game. It was fun. AT-ATs were a pain to take down.

Thief 1 and 2. Proving that graphics don't equal atmosphere.

I enjoyed Thief 3. I recently bought the previous games in the series for cheap in Estonia; I haven't yet played them extensively enough to comment on the relative merits of the games.

[Pannonian]

Any Elite players here?

[Rodion Romanovich]

- Unreal Tournament (an adrenaline kick stronger than sex!)
- Deus Ex (so many options, so good gameplay, and excellent story!)
- Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Warrior Within (basically what all previous platform, adventure and puzzle solving FPS/3rd person games should have been. The story in the 2nd was cool, when you started to realize who that odd guy you met a few times actually was, and with the Dahaka chase scenes.)
- Hitman Contracts and Hitman Blood Money (like PoP and OFP, another example of gameplay of a particular genre created out of combining the best of the existing and adding new innovations - in the case of Hitman, using disguises. The earlier Hitman games all had some huge scale flaws mixed into the greatness, but the flaws in Contracts and Blood Money are minor and not game breaking)
- Vampire Bloodlines (most atmospheric RPG game I've played since Deux Ex!)
- Mafia (good car nostalgia mixed with dense action and good story. The sometimes sadistically hard 3rd person shooting levels sometimes ruined the fun though)
- Operation Flashpoint (basically combined the best of all wargames and added more, making it the ultimate tactical/FPS war game - I have still not seen anything better! Only downside was the IMO not so good mp)
- Red orchestra (for bringing OFP war game quality to a ww2 setting, and being a more mp focused game than OFP!)
- Medieval Total war (a tactical strategy game which allowed me to finally, unlike the other strategy games, command actual battles. Even though in real life grand strategy is far more crucial than battles, commanding battles is an excellent game idea and at the time it was revolutionary compared to the previous resource collection focused strategy games which IMO were quite dull. Technically, Shogun introduced this revolutionary TW gameplay before Medieval, but I didn't discover TW until MTW was released, and decided to buy MTW instead - and MTW was good enough to keep me occupied until RTW came, so I never got around to buying STW, and only played the demo.)
- Europa Barbarorum (most historically accurate ancient era strategy game, and excellent gameplay innovations considering the engine limitations! Made up for the disappointment in terms of historical accuracy RTW was)
- Europa Universalis II (the deepest and most complex grand strategy game I've played. Some triggers were odd, such as orthodox or muslim factions because of their religion developing technology slower, but if you don't see the triggers as cause-and-effect things but a way to abstract the historical situations in as few variables as possible, it feels very historically accurate because the technology of orthodox and muslim factions was temporarily developing a bit slower during the time frame that EUII encompasses. Only downside is that battles aren't played out like in TW, and that the real-time map can be too fast compared to turn based!)