What's your favorite video game of all time?
- Thread starter Poppy JR.
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Fire Emblem. The first one released in America which is technically the seventh one in the overall series.
I grew up with it, so you get the nostalgia vote, it taught me game design, so you get the artistic inspiration vote, and it is still the best game in its own series by far, so you get the timeless vote. I've praised this game time and time again, and I'll do it one more time. If you have ever liked a strategy game of any kind, find yourself a copy of this game. This is best entry in the series that invented permadeath and by doing so, influenced the genre for years to come. It has a solid story, an amazing progression of levels, and has the sort of level design that would give any current game designer wet dreams. Find yourself a copy, love it.
As a plus, its hard to go wrong with any other game in the series as well.
I always stick up for this one on forums like these because people tend to throw it around as an example of a good strategy game, but never a great one. And believe me, it is a great one.
I grew up with it, so you get the nostalgia vote, it taught me game design, so you get the artistic inspiration vote, and it is still the best game in its own series by far, so you get the timeless vote. I've praised this game time and time again, and I'll do it one more time. If you have ever liked a strategy game of any kind, find yourself a copy of this game. This is best entry in the series that invented permadeath and by doing so, influenced the genre for years to come. It has a solid story, an amazing progression of levels, and has the sort of level design that would give any current game designer wet dreams. Find yourself a copy, love it.
As a plus, its hard to go wrong with any other game in the series as well.
I always stick up for this one on forums like these because people tend to throw it around as an example of a good strategy game, but never a great one. And believe me, it is a great one.
I'm going to have to say Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus. Oddysee was a great game (I can't wait for New 'n' Tasty!), but Exoddus took everything that made that game fantastic and multiplied it by 10. Improved, tighter controls than the previous game, fantastic 2.5D graphics (for a PS1 anyway), and an immersive atmosphere make this the best game that I've ever played. Plus, I can appreciate the message the developers were trying to send because they weren't being too anvilicious about it, and the dark humor. Just an all around fantastic game.
Alright! Good to know I'm not the only one who likes that game.busterkeatonrules said:
But as good as it is, my top favorite has got to be Ico. Gameplay was really enjoyable, and no game I've played had the emotional torque it did, especially at the end. Shadow of the Colossus will likely join alongside it, as soon as I get around to playing it.
That said, there are a few games that come pretty close:
Metal Gear Solid 3
Portal 2
Earthbound
Pikmin 2
Spelunky
Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Valkyria Chronicles
Resonance of Fate
Super Metroid. Great atmosphere and music, great bosses, great structure, great weapons including some techniques for sequence breaking that add an entirely new dimension to the game. The only problem is length, but I'd say that about all the games I really like. You just want more and more and more from a game like that, and thankfully there have indeed been some amazing fan remakes of it, one of which actually exceeds the original in graphical fidelity somehow.
I might have said Metroid Prime instead (it's longer), but the Chozo Artifact quest at the end was a chore, as were both the final boss' two phases.
If I was allowed to make one game in a Nintendo franchise, it would be Metroid.
I might have said Metroid Prime instead (it's longer), but the Chozo Artifact quest at the end was a chore, as were both the final boss' two phases.
If I was allowed to make one game in a Nintendo franchise, it would be Metroid.
X-Com: Apocalypse
A very strange answer coming from me, I would say X-Com: UFO Defence, but then I remember how much more there is in Apocalypse. UFO Defence is very tight, nothing is wasted, every element is equally as important. But this isn't about which game is better, it's about which game is my favorite. Apocalypse is my favorite game because it takes every important quality from UFO Defence and takes it to incredible lengths. It gets higher appreciation from me over games like Deus Ex because when it comes down to it Deus Ex, while being one of the greatest games of all time, is still a fairly linear progression through a story.
Apocalypse is totally different each time I've played it. They gave it so many variables, the city has 27 factions, each one trying to accomplish their own goals, each time you start a new campaign the city is randomized changing the way those faction interact. At any time you can choose to attack those factions for whatever reason, you actually send a team to attack them, you go inside their buildings and take their stuff and kill their workers and security people, the faction is then forced to replace the equipment and personnel you destroyed, this affects their financial position in the city and their relations with other factions. It also affects how active they are, if you empty their operating budgets they can't be a visible force in the city.
Factions will enter conflicts with each other, and the private company that runs the police force and the government already starts out in conflict with the many criminal syndicates in the game. In one game very late, right before I was about to destroy the Aliens, The week ended and I was about to receive my standard X-Com Government subsidy and they increased my subsidy that week, but their income was so depleted from fighting in the streets with criminal syndicates that they were only able to pay me 5% of the normal amount, that was okay because I was making all my money through manufacturing alien technology at the time.
In one conflict a stray Justice missile from a Diablo gang's hovercar hit a building belonging to the Technocrats and leveled it, including all of the transportation conduit branching off of it, this caused the Technocrats to scramble their own hovercars and they totally destroyed Diablo's hovercars and one of the slums owned by Diablo. The Extropians hate the Technocrats because they are political rivals, so the Extropians allied with Diablo, when the Technocrats destroyed Diablo's slums, one of Diablo's gang rivals, Pyske, allied with the Technocrats, and from that point on, each gang was effectively being supported by these two political lobbyist groups. Then when the Aliens managed to infiltrate and control the Extropians and I began raiding them, I found myself in higher standing with Pyske and the Technocrats.
Apocalypse manages to pull off complex political intrigue, if you took out the aliens and added a slightly more complex market it would still be a great game about a city in the future where corporations have their own armies.
And, you can go to a corporations facility with 25 people armed with 2 disrupter cannons each and literally level the building piece by piece, completely vaporize the supports and let gravity bring everything above it down, including their people who will be crushed under the rumble.
Long story short: You can vaporize an entire sports stadium with hand held weapons in real-time for the purpose of bankrupting the league...oh, and there are aliens.
A very strange answer coming from me, I would say X-Com: UFO Defence, but then I remember how much more there is in Apocalypse. UFO Defence is very tight, nothing is wasted, every element is equally as important. But this isn't about which game is better, it's about which game is my favorite. Apocalypse is my favorite game because it takes every important quality from UFO Defence and takes it to incredible lengths. It gets higher appreciation from me over games like Deus Ex because when it comes down to it Deus Ex, while being one of the greatest games of all time, is still a fairly linear progression through a story.
Apocalypse is totally different each time I've played it. They gave it so many variables, the city has 27 factions, each one trying to accomplish their own goals, each time you start a new campaign the city is randomized changing the way those faction interact. At any time you can choose to attack those factions for whatever reason, you actually send a team to attack them, you go inside their buildings and take their stuff and kill their workers and security people, the faction is then forced to replace the equipment and personnel you destroyed, this affects their financial position in the city and their relations with other factions. It also affects how active they are, if you empty their operating budgets they can't be a visible force in the city.
Factions will enter conflicts with each other, and the private company that runs the police force and the government already starts out in conflict with the many criminal syndicates in the game. In one game very late, right before I was about to destroy the Aliens, The week ended and I was about to receive my standard X-Com Government subsidy and they increased my subsidy that week, but their income was so depleted from fighting in the streets with criminal syndicates that they were only able to pay me 5% of the normal amount, that was okay because I was making all my money through manufacturing alien technology at the time.
In one conflict a stray Justice missile from a Diablo gang's hovercar hit a building belonging to the Technocrats and leveled it, including all of the transportation conduit branching off of it, this caused the Technocrats to scramble their own hovercars and they totally destroyed Diablo's hovercars and one of the slums owned by Diablo. The Extropians hate the Technocrats because they are political rivals, so the Extropians allied with Diablo, when the Technocrats destroyed Diablo's slums, one of Diablo's gang rivals, Pyske, allied with the Technocrats, and from that point on, each gang was effectively being supported by these two political lobbyist groups. Then when the Aliens managed to infiltrate and control the Extropians and I began raiding them, I found myself in higher standing with Pyske and the Technocrats.
Apocalypse manages to pull off complex political intrigue, if you took out the aliens and added a slightly more complex market it would still be a great game about a city in the future where corporations have their own armies.
And, you can go to a corporations facility with 25 people armed with 2 disrupter cannons each and literally level the building piece by piece, completely vaporize the supports and let gravity bring everything above it down, including their people who will be crushed under the rumble.
Long story short: You can vaporize an entire sports stadium with hand held weapons in real-time for the purpose of bankrupting the league...oh, and there are aliens.
I actually remember one mission I had in that game in a munitions factory. I think we got off two shots before essentially the entire building exploded in a massive chain reaction. I killed the aliens, but the corporation wasn't too happy with me.Do4600 said:
That's a difficult one to answer because horror is different for everyone. Personally jump scares and endless gore doesn't do it for me but Silent Hill's deeply unsettling world certainly does.Poppy JR. said:
Silent Hill is special for what it doesn't do. Sure it uses plenty of disturbing visuals and threatening enemies but, for the most part, it's the elements SH holds back that actually provides the scares. Games like Resident Evil will have hard coded into us the sort of situations in which a scare will occur, a monster will jump out, a boss battle will trigger etc. But SH elects to ignore these moments, leaving the player uncomfortable and on edge with an expectation that is never validated. Even the amazing discordant soundtrack is more effective when they don't use it; there's nothing worse than entering a silent room.
I honestly believe our own brains make the whole experience far scarier than it actually has any right to be. For example I found the film The Ring terrifying and it haunted my dreams for weeks after viewing, but some people were bored by it. The Ring uses very similar ideas to Silent Hill and as such it will depend entirely on the viewer/player as to how much they get from it.
I'd highly recommend starting with any of the original 4 Silent Hill games. You can buy the original Playstation game on PSN. The most recent Downpour isn't too bad for a recent game but heed my warning when I say don't touch Homecoming! It's a pile of arse.
In no way would I consider Grandia a flawless game, but the first half of the game inspire a sense of mystique, wonder, and genuine awe that games today seem incapable of achieving. Grandia is an adventure in the truest sense.busterkeatonrules said:
Check out this live peformance of the Grandia theme [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78_MMY_WnUM]. How awesome would it have been to experience it live?
Oh that's a great one, had a physical copy for years and only finished it after a 3 year hiatus or so due to lack of PS1 playing capable system. However, my #1 game for me would be Chrono Trigger hands down. I have played through it on emulators, the SNES, the PS1 and the DS and damn near on the iPod(but I have an Android tablet with an SNES emulator). I've played through it over a dozen times and have yet to tire of it. Everything about it I just find fantastic. The graphics, the music(Frog's Theme for one, one of the best) and the gameplay.busterkeatonrules said:
Planescape Torment, even though I have finished quite lately having never played it "back in the day".
It completely blew my mind and me being a sucker for story over everything else then I don't think I will find another game that will surpass that game in that department.
It completely blew my mind and me being a sucker for story over everything else then I don't think I will find another game that will surpass that game in that department.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess : I'll spare my usual nostalgic ramblings and just summarize by saying that, growing up as a huge Zelda fan, this game pleased and delighted me in untold ways. It was at once a nostalgic homage to 3D Zelda's past while at the same time completely raising the scale and size of the world, the boss fights, and hidden secrets. I also feel the game has the best atmosphere of all the Zelda games and best captures that sense of heroic fantasy adventure they all strive towards. The level and world design is top notch and is just brimming with mystery and life. Perhaps the best example of this, is the ride across Gerudo desert Boar-back in search of the Arbiter's Ground. While riding across the barren wasteland the atmosphere is heavy; so heavy that you can almost feel the sun beating down your back. You then stumble upon a huge enemy camp which you proceed to advance upon. While exploring / infiltrating the enemy camp, you stumble upon a roasted boar that the enemies were preparing for dinner. With this small detail, Twilight Princess' Hyrule becomes all the more real. Link's enemies didn't just dwell around in dungeons and patrol fields - they had homes and lives. They ate and slept and lived in communities much like Link and the people of Ordon Village. The game is chock-full of moments like this such as meeting the Yetis who live atop Snowpeak, getting lost amidst the hustle and bustle of Castle Town, discovering the ancient ruins of a lost Skybound city, etc. These moments (to name a few) made the world of Hyrule all the more immersive and have yet to be topped in a Zelda game. It is a perfect representation of both everything Zelda is and everything it can be. Twilight Princess, to me, represents all that I love about both video games as a medium and the Zelda series more specifically; building upon and actualizing all the values and adventure fantasies I held so close to my heart growing up and creating an absolutely enchanting and memorable interactive adventure in the process.
That was great - they even got the electric guitar part just right! I always admired the composer for including an electric guitar in a symphonic piece. That had to take some balls - though the REALLY cool part is, it WORKS! Doesn't sound the least bit out of place.AntiChrist said:
Thanks for sharing!