After reading the 'top 10 games' thread in the Europa Barbarorum forum, I felt the desire to elaborate on which games made a lasting impression on me, and why.
1. Freespace 2
Different from most other games on this list in that it was not a high-profile release. As such, it deserves a little further elaboration: it is a space combat sim - some of you may be familiar with the Wing Commander series, I'm told that the Freespace series resembles it.
Without question, my favorite game ever. I think I've played through the main campaign six or seven times now. I'm not normally a fan of more action-oriented games, but there was something about this one that just clicked. It was all-around well-executed, with solid gameplay, story, and expectionally good voice acting. Unfortunately, while it got good reviews, it did not achieve any major commercial success, a fact most often attributed to the lack of advertising by the publisher (Interplay).
Kudos to the community, particularly the Source Code Project guys and the creators of the various campaigns and mods, for prolonging the life of the game immensely (the game was released in 1998, and the community is still going strong, with several large projects under construction).
2. Morrowind
The setting was great, the concept of traveling the large game world freely and doing as you wished was a breath of fresh air, and the community created lots of quality mods with the modding tools provided by Bethesda. The gameplay mechanics themselves were not all that great, but I spent a lot of time playing it, nonetheless.
3. Diablo II
Solid gameplay. Unfortunately, the game was designed with multiplayer in mind first and foremost, at the cost of the single player mode (this is visible in the sucky save system, and items being level-limited in single player) - still, I find it fun to play in single player, when I feel I have the time and energy for a long session (which are required by the silly save system, unless you want to fight the same monsters multiple times).
4. Neverwinter Nights
I can't really explain why I like this game, but I spent a lot of hours with it. I'll have to finish the Hordes of the Underdark expansion some time.
5. X-Com - Ufo Defense
Released in 1993; personally, I don't mind the rather primitive (but quite functional) graphics, the interface, while a bit clunky by today's standards, is less of an obstacle than in many other old games, and the core concept is very solid, despite the game having numerous minor flaws.
So what do you people think? Which games did you like most, and why?
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