Games you think everyone should at least try.

[TheJazzyH]

I can't guarantee that everyone will like these, but I have a few games that deserves more attention, credit, or sales than they got.

The World Ends With You - If you've been looking for an innovative RPG, look no further, as TWEWY is where's its at. This is a one-of-a-kind JRPG that makes full use of the DS its played on. And although every game mechanic sounds gimmicky on paper, somehow it all comes together to make one of the most addictive games I've ever played. The story is also top notch, and if rock, rap, and electro-pop are your thing, so is the soundtrack.

Transformers: War for Cybertron - This game is just like Batman: Arkham Asylum in that its a good game for a licensed franchise that finally happened after years of getting just crap. The campaign is good, but the multiplayer's the real reason to get it, and the reason it's still among my favorites. The transforming mechanic is well-done, and if you hate cover systems in shooters, Transformers: WFC is one of the few shooters today that forego a dedicated cover system. You don't even need to be a transformers fan to enjoy WFC, although the game is indeed a love letter to fans. However, I might actually advise against buying WFC at this time, since the online community is nearly dead, last time I checked. Instead, I will direct your attention to the upcoming sequel, Fall of Cybertron, which is already looking great. If you like third - person shooters, then Transformers, WFC or FOC, are great choices, especially if you hate dedicated cover systems like I do.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - This game has already been mentioned, but I'll give it a shout-out anyway. To be honest, I never played the original Deus Ex, or Invisible War either. But as I played HR, I realized I was experiencing not just a game, but a work of art. The way the story touches on philisophical issues like transhumanism was brilliant, and the various emails, newspapers, messages, and ebooks breathe more life into the world around you than was needed.
Maybe I'm not in a position to say this, but the gameplay was just as great as you'd expect from a Deus Ex game, with a wide variety of ways to complete levels. Even if you, for example, fail to talk a guy into telling you what you need to know, you can always just sneak around the place and listen in to his conversations or hack his computer to get the same info. The unity of vision in this game is also amazing; rarely do I ever play a game that really makes me feel like the developers poured their hearts and souls into it, and got everyone fully involved in it.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Okami (what? You're surprised?)

It basically does what Zelda does, but does it better.

Better art style, better music, better characters, better story.

Not many games let you play a Sun Goddess. Also, the Sun Goddess is a wolf. Also, the wolf uses a magical paint brush to manipulate reality.

 

[LookingGlass]

Keeping it to 5+ year old games that are all in different genres or at least quite different:

- Fallout 1 and 2. I played these after Fallout 3 and loved them. Enjoyed them much more than Fallout 3 and New Vegas. RPGs at their best.

- Deus Ex. There really is nothing else like it.

- Thief 1 and 2. Stealth gameplay is rarely done well, but it worked beautifully here.

- Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. If you want proof that good first person melee combat is possible, check this out.

- Silent Hill 2. The best survival horror package we've ever been given, if you don't like this you needn't bother with the genre.

- Morrowind. More accessible than earlier grand-scale RPGs, with less hand-holding than the more recent ones. A wonderfully realised world with near-limitless possibilities.

- Rome: Total War (or Medieval 2 or Shogun 2). It doesn't matter if you've never played a strategy game, you need to try a Total War game. Give it a few hours (it's overwhelming at first) and you might just be hooked.

- Company of Heroes. I feel like if you're going to like any RTS games, you're going to like this.

- Knights of the old Republic. Not only is this a fantastic RPG, but you need to play it just to see what's possible with licensed games when a competent developer gets a chance.

- The Longest Journey. Shows that point-and-click adventure games can still be great.

- Jet Set Radio [Future]. There's really nothing that looks like it, or plays like it.

 

[pyrosaw]

Tribes 2. Great jetpack teambased FPS made back in 2001. LAN parties are a blast. It's pretty cheap now a days.

Jet Set Radio Future. Colorful, fun, and one of my favorite soundtracks in gaming. A fantastic grafitti, rollerblading, riggamaroll.

 

[SarcasmoPope]

The Stanley Parable
Mod for Half-Life 2 that was recommended to me. Lots of different paths you can take and is really short.

 

[RuralGamer]

snip

This. I'm as amazed as I am extremely disappointed that the series went so quickly downhill after Call of Duty 4; WaW was meh, alright, MW2 was terrible and BlOps wasn't much better; I'm not planning to even touch MW3. In terms of singleplayer campaign, I'd argue its the best in the last decade at least. MP was, back in the day, awesome and its a shame that only harcore fans and hackers are left. Subsequent games are basically bloated, overweight and unbalanced versions of CoD4's and that's why they aren't as good; CoD4 kept it simple and addictive (somehow). In my opinion, this is the FPS you should try if you haven't played one before (just not for the MP now...)

Total Annihilation. Years ahead of its time? Try a decade. Ask yourself... if that could be done in 1997, what can we do now?

This, this and this! I was amazed when I first played Supreme Commander and thought "You know what, this is supposed to be a 'spiritual successor', but I actually think TA, despite its terrible AI, was actually better." TA, despite the aforementioned AI problems, is one of those games that just seems to have come around too early; it had good in-game physics (which, as modern also demonstrate, can have hilarious, unintended consequences) and the skirmish maps were a really good mix. Graphically it isn't that bad either, considering how old it is.

KOTOR: really good example of a well-done RPG in my books. Awesome story, nicely challenging and a really good finale.

Mass Effect (and I suppose Mass Effect 2): good mix of TPS and RPG elements, good game for story-telling and nice length.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Let me try to post a few things that other people haven't said.

The Binding of Isaac: Probably one of the strangest, sickest, most original, and absolutely addicting games I have ever played. If you can embrace the game's brutal difficulty (that requires you to restart when you die) and twisted sense of humor, it will probably have some of the best dollar to content ratio of any single player game you could ever hope for. If you think there's nothing original in games, check this one out.

Nehrim: A total conversion mod for Oblivion that surpasses Oblivion in many ways. This game features a world that feels worth exploring, and a main quest that is far more interesting than just about any questline in Oblivion. This praise is coming from someone that can't stick with Oblivion, even heavily modded, for more than a few hours before not playing it for several months.

Amnesia: The Dark Decent: This game has the best atmosphere of any that I have played. It is also one of the only things in any form of media that is actually able to scare me. If you like horror games, you cannot miss this one.

I would also like to recommend Psychonauts, Morrowind, Deus Ex, and Portal, but other people have already talked about those.

 

[lady man lady]

tak and the great juju challenge... played it on gamecube, loved the game and art direction, did not care for the cut scenes. that was years ago, i don't know how it would hold up, i don't think i have ever seen any copy other than the one i played

 

[Stravant]

Braid. No other game has been able to keep me thinking and rethinking about it for so long after finishing it's story, even if the game's rather short and simple. Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask comes a close second.

For sure this one, the time manipulation mechanics in that game were superb

 

[ThePS1Fan]

Resident Evil 4
Silent Hill 2
Twisted Metal Black
Serious Sam
The Spyro The Dragon trilogy on PS1
Portal 1&2
Half-Life 1&2

 

[RanD00M]

I'm not going to stop talking about this for a long time.

Katawa Shoujo

It's 100% free and was an amazing experience. Though calling it a game is a bit of a stretch...

EDIT: Though you said you are young, this game is 18+ so keep that in mind.

You can always just turn of adult content. Bye bye 18+ rating.

No matter what, whether you keep the sex scenes on or turn them off they still will be..."puts on glasses"
Disabeled....

YEAHHHHHHHHHHH

That was in such bad taste. I mean, I laughed, but it was still in bad taste.

 

[Zx30]

Vanquish on Xbox360. The best action game I've played.

 

[Rodrigo Girao]

Propeller Arena, the best game never released for the Dreamcast.

 

[tthor]

Bulletstorm.

It got written off as a "dude-bro" game and thus many people missed out on what was probably one of the best shooters, if not one of the best games, of 2011.

I tried the Bullet Storm demo, expecting it to be awesome- and I found it incredibly boring... it was a big disappointment :\

 

[Windcaler]

The original Dues Ex is a must play. IMO its the best PC game to be released to this day

X-Com: Enemy unknown. You run a global agency designed to stop UFO invasion. Its really awesome if you like strategic games. Probably my favorite franchise of all time too

Shadow of the Colossus. There really isnt anything like it out there and its my favorite PS2 game of all time. Luckily they did a new release with current generation graphics not to long ago

Dawn of war 2 is a great RTS, one I personally enjoy more then other RTS games but honorable mentions have to go to Starcraft 2, anything Age of Empires, and anything total war (ALthough shogun 2 is my favorite of the series thus far)

For Moba games (Multiplayer online battle arena) I really like league of legends which is free to play and they have probably the best business model of free to play games out there. You can spend money to unlock things for the sake of convienance but just about everything can be unlocked with currency earned in game. Problem is the ranked side of the community is pretty horrible. You could also try Heros of Newerth which Ive never played and Defense of the ancients 2 is coming out soonish

For fighting games a recent one I would recommend is Marvel vs capcom 3, its flashy and fun. Street fighter 4 also gets an honorable mention. For older ones, probably my favorite was Dragonball Z boudokai 3 because its got a fighting system that can be very strategic and still relies on lightning fast reflexes

Minecraft and Terraria are both excellent creative games that are worth a look

For RPGs, which is my favorite genre, well anything made by Bioware is worth a look but Dragon age: Origins and Knights of the old republic are probably the best two they've made. Fallout 3 and New vegas are also good, along with anything from the Elder scrolls series. Early games made by Square soft or Enix (before the companies merged to make sqaure enix) are worth a look. Of those I recommend Final fantasy 4, 6, and tactics, Breath of fire, Dragon warrior 1-4, and Secret of mana

Those are just a few off the top of my head

 

[Anthony Wells]

im gonna throw my lot in and say the sly cooper series. its got a fun little story well told and has great graphics with a comic book art style. its by the same devolopers who made the infamous series which i also recommend you to try. all available on the ps3 for roughly 100 dollars for all of them. 30 for the collection, 30 for infmous and 40 for infamous 2. thats buying new of course and i would since it supports the developers.

 

[xScaramouchx]

FreeSpace 2
My greatest of all time.

 

[dangoball]

So I've read through all recommendations above and I have to agree on Total Annihilation even though I'm not a big fan of RTS myself.

Fallout 1 and 2 are a must if you like RPGs and I consider them the best post apocalyptic RPGs to date (as of Fallout: NV, well, I can't play that one. It's just off, somehow)

KotOR series also has my full support, although KotOR 2 is better with some Restoration mod

Planescape: Torment also has my vote. Simply epic. But read on, this is important:

Baldur's Gate (1 and 2). How come I haven't noticed it? It's a marvel in it's own right and playing BG before Planescape can help you understand it better. Planescape is really lore-heavy and since some of it's subjects are touched it BGs (planar spheres, illithids and other stuff) you could find it helpful later on.
And now it kinda sounds like you should play Baldur's Gate only because Planscape, so NO! Baldur's Gate is my all time favorite fantasy RPG. Engaging story, nice gameplay and most importantly great character interactions! I still play it and mostly to see how different party members interact with each other.

And one last RPG:

Jade Empire. It's set in Chinese mythology, so you get to see (and kinda even play as) stuff like Bull demon and martial arts are its main focus gameplay wise. Story is also quite good.

 

[Bostur]

I've focused on older games, because a lot of other posters are making excellent recommendations for more recent ones. Not all of these can be played, and many probably wont feel fun for a modern audience. But I still believe knowing about their existance is important, especially because a lot of the innovation that these games made is being forgotten and redone by modern studios. Some of these however are still very playable I believe.

Adventure games. It's a genre that is almost dead by now. There are two main distinctions, text adventures and graphical point-and-click adventures. Some of the old text adventures are playable online, for instance at http://www.ifiction.org/games/
Some graphical adventures have been republished at Steam, the Monkey Island series is probably the most well known.
IMHO the best adventure game ever was Grim Fandango, unfortunately it was also one of the last. It's a bit of a collector's item these days. GF was a commercial flop, probably in part due to the unusual control scheme. But it was loved by critics and fans. Youtube has full playthroughs available, so at least the story can be seen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Fandango
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yfkm0xnlqk

Sid Meiers Pirates! (1987) - A game that made a very big influence. A remake is available on Steam with the same name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Pirates!

The Civilization series. Probably Sid Meiers most famous work. The original game was very loosely based on the board game of the same name, but with mechanics better suited for video games. Civilization showed that strategy games can be reasonably accessible and deep at the same time. The series has reached the fifth installment, my personal favorite is Civ4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_%28series%29

Capitalism (1995) - A very deep and somewhat geeky economic simulation. It's a rare thing to see a game of that genre, the Capitalism games were some of the best of the genre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_%28video_game%29

Dune 2 (1992) - A revolution when it was released, the game that started the RTS genre. Unfortunately the gameplay was scarred by the unwieldy controls. The concept of control groups hadn't been invented yet. Which is probably the reason why the genre didn't take off properly until the first Warcraft and Command and Conquer.
A remake of Dune 2 was released by the name of Dune 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_2

Populous (1989) - Gave name to a genre called 'God games'. Probably one of the most influential games of all time. Provided inspiration for Sim games, RTS games, building games etc. Also the game that made Peter Molyneux famous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populous

Elite (1984) - A space sim for 8-bit computers. It was an impressive feat to put that much game onto an 8-bit platform. Elite used 3D wireframe vector graphics. It was also famous for it's manual and other content in the box. The BBC Micro version was considered the 'real' one by fans, but was ported to many platforms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_%28video_game%29

Wing Commander (1990) - A cinematic space sim. This has probably been a very big influence for modern BioWare games, Mass Effect in particular. Tons of other games copied the concept later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander_%28video_game%29

Ultima series - fans seems to prefer Ultima VII, I personally only played Ultima V. One of the longest living RPG franchises.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_%28series%29

Wasteland (1988) - Predecessor to the Fallout franchise, and one of the few RPGs where the player is active instead of reactive. Most RPGs tell the player when actions can be initiated, Wasteland on the other hand expects the player to initiate actions using a very simple skill based system. It's also very long, open-world and with a decent plot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_%28video_game%29

The Gold Box series - The series that matured wRPG video games. It was incredibly popular and all old RPG fans remember some of these games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_box

StarCraft (1998) - Probably the first video game to reach E-Sports status. Also sporting one of the best single-player RTS campaigns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starcraft


Also look through http://gog.com

They have a lot of supported old games. Not all of them are good or important but the site has some great user reviews.

 

[Noala]

Most definitely Earthbound, one of the craziest and most heartfelt games I've ever played. Earthbound also has the most disturbing final boss fight ever made.

Then there's Eversion, a game that is designed to make you feel very unnerved, I haven't finished because I was too freaked out but the parts I did play were very good.