What game(s) no matter what, you will always have in high regard

[God of Nothing]

SiN - A cyberpunk FPS from 1998. I still occasionally come back to it for its fun gameplay and badass rock music.

nonsense, you do it for sinclair's titties

 

[AbduluCthuluZulu]

nonsense, you do it for sinclair's titties

Sinclair's titties only appear at the end though, so the fun gameplay and badass rock music are still nessecary in the meantime.

 

[God of Nothing]

Sinclair's titties only appear at the end though, so the fun gameplay and badass rock music are still nessecary in the meantime.

oh, you meant just the first game

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Faxanadu, that game is great and hasn't aged THAT badly. On emulators you don't even have to deal with the real foe of the game: the fucking password screen. Looking at it now I don't know what made it so difficult, maybe it was stuff like O, 0 and o when written down by a little retard(me). Back then I was 100% certain that the game sometimes gave an invalid password.

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

Warcraft 3 for the "Open RPG" genre of custom maps. It was so much fun starting out as a single unit, building a stronghold, and slowly taking over the entire map with a sprawling army and empire, making and breaking alliances with other players along the way. It had flavors of grand strategy, but in realtime and with actual units instead of just numbers and math. Similar to the Life of a Peasant genre but not as fuckass boring.

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is another. I'm glad It's finally getting a sequel, but I'm genuinely concerned if DD2 will live up to the first game. in the same way I'm concerned about whether STALKER 2 will live up to STALKER fan games. I've probably finished DD: DA through a good two-dozen times and I still find things I didn't know about. It feels a hell of a lot like playing through a D&D module that was adapted into a character action game, which from what I read and watched about it is quite literally what the director and design lead were going for.

Age of Empires 2, Age of Mythology, and Red Alert 2 all share the same level of 'comfy RTS' godhood. I can't even imagine how many days worth of my life has just been spent steamrolling AI 'players' for the sake of listening to those games' soundtracks.


EDIT: Also I see a few people saying OG Doom, so I'll willingly be that prick for a hot second. IMO the original Doom games don't hold up on gameplay variety anymore or provide the challenge a serious gamer would want to really test their skills. The modding scene however is one of the best fucking things in the world, and has given me some of the most interesting gaming experiences I've ever had, full stop. Most recently, I've been playing the Hideous Destructor realism mod over the top of the "sterilized" version of Ashes: Afterglow and it's practically become its own survival sim game in its own right, sans Food and Water bars and that kinda tedious shit.

 

[Scolopendra Dramatica]

Silent Hill 1-4
Legacy of Kain series (best script and voice actors of all games to this day)
Resident Evil 1-4
Ps1 Tomb Raider, Crash and Spyro
Parasite Eve 1-2
Outer Wilds (best mechanics and inspired scenery)
Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas
Ps1 Wipeout games
FF7 (NOT you remake) , FF8 and FF10
Tetris
Project Zomboid
Abe's exodus and Stranger's Wrath
Elden Ring
Postal 1 - 2
Half life and Portal
Sims 2 and most early Tycoon games

You can see my bias of age, but I'm also strongly of the belief that the low stakes and massive complications involved in the PS1 era brought out the most obsessive and creative of nerds and scared off enough normies to foster in a golden era.

Honestly you should see some of the daft and brilliant programming they had to do to make Crash Bandicoot work on that poor crappy console, it's military standard genius. Or at least old military.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

but I think Black Ops 2 is one of the few games where no matter how old I get, I'll never forget this game.

Because Sam Worthington was so shit in it? Like he is in everything else?

Anyway, Banjo-Kazooie is still my favourite ever game.

 

[RollerGator]

Tekken Tag Tournament
Morrowind
Mortal Kombat Deception
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (PS2)
WrestleMania 2000
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead
Halo 1-3
Left 4 Dead
Sonic Adventure Battle 2
San Andreas
RAD Robot Alchemical Drive
Soul Calibur 2
Body Harvest
Bushido Blade 1&2

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

Ps1 Tomb Raider

A few months back I tried to get my nephew into the very first Tomb Raider since I picked up the original trilogy on GoG. He walked down the first corridor, took almost 20 minutes to figure out how to climb up a single block to get a medpack, and then saw one wolf and freaked the fuck out and refused to play it again.

Good times.

 

[Asian tech support]

Morrowind
Demon's Souls
Vermintide 1
Deus Ex

There are sequels and successors that I hold just as high but often led to things I loathe. For example, I think Dark Souls is a better game than Demon's Souls, but DS1 also popularized the series and a lot of the things I don't like about DS2/3 are due to radical changes and mass appeal factors. As autistic as it might sound, I'm going to remember Demon's more fondly because it gave us DS1.

 

[Osama Bin Laden]

pretty based to wake up and to know everyone has good video game tastes.

sometimes i love this forum

 

[YachieKicchou]

Armored Core 4 Answer.
Ace Combat Zero.
Tribes (including Ascend) (SHAZBOT).
Unreal Tournament (excluding 3).
Devil may Cry.
Tony Hawks Underground 2
SOCOM 2.
Pre-World Monhun.

 

[Shamino]

Fallout. Bethesda will keep butchering this franchise with their retardo takes of apocalyptic wasteland for sure, and Tim Cain may have lost his touch. But none will ever diminish my regards of classic Fallout as one of the best CRPGs ever made.
Gothic I & II. Regardless of deep Piranha bytes's decline takes a downturn.
Classic Tomb Raider trilogy. Verbatim as Gothic case, only difference this franchise has been further rolling around publishers in comparison, and will keep spanning a longer trajectory of sequels to either disgrace or reivindicate TR. No matter, good old TR will always be regarded as a wonder to behold of 3D platforming.
Monster Hunter classic. This is an odd one for me, because I can't think of any other franchise pushing my tolerance for shittiness as much as MH does, only cuz the gameplay it's so good, there's hardly anything like this in the ARPG market: you can play without autotarget, and approach combat giving more thought on every action you take than just sheer reactive button mash, because any of these actions demands an animation commitment that may setup your character into harm's way. Current World-Rise gen massively popularized the franchise and introduced a lot of so badly needed QoL changes (like a menu map or a visually explicit sharpness gauge), but is also pretty much leaning towards the slippery slope of Street Fighter-esque DLCs path.
Sonic Mania. Ah sonic, embodiment of internet cringe and CWC prime target of fetishization. At this point is a "do you worst" matter, regardless how terrible will turn the fandom and 3d titles, classic 2D sonic are always going to remain as a marvelous unique take of platform gaming of analogue control of speed in contrast to Mario's digital yet refined input.

 

[Absolutego]

OG Starcraft
Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Civilization V
Faster than Light
Asscreed Pirate Edition
Evil Genius
Crusader Kings 2
Banished
Left 4 Dead
Sleeping Dogs

 

[Idiotron]

Part of why I can speak English is Final Fantasy 7.
It was the first game I had to use a dictionary for and I've learned hundreds of words and phrases from it.
I wouldn't be able to live my current life without knowing English so I will always appreciate FF7.
It's also a fun game with a great turn based battle system.

 

[TVB]

Team Fortress 2
Re/Volt
Postal 2
Deus Ex
CoD WaW-BO2
The Halo Trilogy
GTA: III, VC, SA and LCS
Luigi's Mansion
Morrwind and Oblivion
NFS: High Stakes, Hot Pursuit, Underground 1+2 and Most Wanted
2000s WWE
Pikmin 1&2
Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Academy
OG Guild Wars
Tomb Raider 1-3, Legend and Anniversary
X-Men Legend
Bully
OG C&C
Max Payne 1-3
Mass Effect 1-3
Silent Hill 1-3
Burnout 3
SpongeBob: Battle for Bikini Bottom
Daytona USA
Left 4 Dead
Half-Life
Simpsons: Hit and Run

There's a lot more honestly

 

[Slav Power]

Saints Row 2 - one of the best open world crime games ever made, with a great map, many fun activities, and a story that tends to be humorous but knows when to get serious, and when it does it hits you like a truck. Saints Row: The Third was a downgrade in so many areas compared to SR2 that I'm honestly ashamed it took me so long to play the OG's. The worst part is that we will never see a proper PC port of it because Volition has lied to Mike Watson on his deathbed and now greasy Randy will never even let the source code out.

Yakuza series - I bought Yakuza 0 thinking it's a Japanese GTA clone, and ended up crying like a bitch by the end of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. For all the plot holes, retarded plot twists and clunky mechanics it was still one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. I was wrong, it wasn't a Japanese GTA, it was something much better.

GTA IV - it was the peak of the series when it comes to writing, and it's also the game that made me discover Viktor Tsoi thanks to Vladivostok FM which I'll be forever thankful for. It being so technically advanced however led to it's reception being negative due to the fact that R* was unable to implement the same scope as they did in San Andreas. That and many other reasons, but ultimately it was a great game. Maybe not a GTA game, but it was a good experience.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) - the best racing game of the 2000's. The gameplay, the soundtrack, the story, it all clicked perfectly and it's still a blast to play almost 20 years after it's release. It's funny how the newest Need for Speed games simply cannot match this one in any way, Black Box achieved the peak of the series with that one.

The Talos Principle - while at it's core it's a tedious puzzle game, everything else about it is absolutely phenomenal. The story, the level design, the music, it's another one of those experiences that stays with you forever. If anything the puzzle game format of the game is what ultimately cripples it's popularity. It's baffling that this game was made by the same studio that's known for only making games about a time travelling Duke Nukem knockoff fighting aliens in ancient Egypt.

Not necessarily a game per se, but John Carmack's game engine work. He is singlehandedly responsible for the most expansive family of game engines thanks to his work on the Quake engine. Even now, in Half Life: Alyx there's still bits of code left from the very first iteration of the Quake engine from 1996.

And it might sound stupid, but, Minecraft. That stupid block game led to me constantly watching Yogscast which helped me learn English a lot, and also helped me understand how computers work by modding it back in the Beta days.

GTA San Andreas did that too, learning how to mod, how to torrent (because that's how I first got it), and learning English because I played without subtitles. And it also helped me finish high school, believe it or not.

As for some other games:
Sims 1, 2 and 3, I just love playing home design in those, not to mention all the countless cool mods I've accumulated for those to make even fancier homes (I never found enjoyment in killing my Sims).
Icy Tower, one of those free games you'd end up playing endlessly because they were this much fun.
Submachine and Daymare Town series, one of the first Flash games that I've ever played, Skutnik's art style and design always mesmerized me.
Colin McRae Rally 04, it was a very fun rally game even if back when I was a kid I found more entertainment in trying to fuck the cars up as much as I could.
Metin2, back in the day it was the best free multiplayer RPG game around.
Need for Speed World, it was great fun that got killed by EA's greed. I still regret not knowing how to back up your account before the servers shut down.
Team Fortress 2, it was a lot of fun back when I still found competitive multiplayer games entertaining.
Left 4 Dead 2, the best party game FPS on Steam. Just get three friends together and have a blast.
Portal 2, one of the best endings in video game history. Also a good party co-op mode.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, say what you want, it was fun to collect all those beans as a kid.

I'm probably forgetting about other games I've played and remember fondly, but eh.

 

[Some Dumb Faggot]

After witnessing the shitstorms Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 became easily Diablo 2. The fact that the foundation was so solid that people more than 20 years later are still playing it is a testament to how great Blizzard used to be.

Seriously fuck Activision

 

[Osama Bin Laden]

Fallout. Bethesda will keep butchering this franchise with their retardo takes of apocalyptic wasteland for sure, and Tim Cain may have lost his touch. But none will ever diminish my regards of classic Fallout as one of the best CRPGs ever made.

i've tried to play fallout, i've talked about this with my internet friends but my experience with fallout is fallout 4. i like what fallout is, but the game seemed too shit imo

Yakuza series - I bought Yakuza 0 thinking it's a Japanese GTA clone, and ended up crying like a bitch by the end of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. For all the plot holes, retarded plot twists and clunky mechanics it was still one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. I was wrong, it wasn't a Japanese GTA, it was something much better.

same way i found out about yakuza, i was following a minor lolcow at the time who was a massive weeaboo who loved yakuza and the persona series. the japs know how to make a compelling story

And it might sound stupid, but, Minecraft. That stupid block game led to me constantly watching Yogscast which helped me learn English a lot, and also helped me understand how computers work by modding it back in the Beta days.

based.

pretty wholesome to see non english speakers learn english through games i grew up with

based.

After witnessing the shitstorms Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 became easily Diablo 2. The fact that the foundation was so solid that people more than 20 years later are still playing it is a testament to how great Blizzard used to be.

Seriously fuck Activision

i never played diablo 2, but i remember countless nights of eating local pizza, drinking pepsi and playing diablo 3 on his xbox 360 with my friends and neighbors. i wasn't a diablo fan but then again, might be biased

 

[Shamino]

@Osama Bin Laden that's sad ur exposure to fallout was with F4. Mine was F3, but I got the first games on GOG for free several years ago then I got enthralled with the franchise. No amount of bethestard shenanigans are gonna erase from my memory that legendary confrontation with the Master in F1.