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

Not a single one of you niggers has mentioned Homeworld a legitimate 10/10 or Homeworld: Cataclysm a legitimate 11/10. I am disappoint.
"No one's left. Every thing's gone. Kharak is burning." - Karen S'jet, Fleet Command "

The scaffold has been destroyed. All orbital facilities destroyed. Significant debris ring in low Kharak orbit.

Receiving no communications from anywhere in the system... not even beacons." - Fleet Intelligence

"There's nothing left for us here now... let's go." - Fleet Intelligence
 
Castlevania 64 - Actually spooky atmosphere. Thats enough for me
It was my first Castlevania and yes, i've played the nes ones, rondo of blood, SC4 and SoTN and i still like Castlevania 64 as its own thing, for the time it was a decent game and like i said i love the quiet creepy mood. I like none of the other 3d ones.

Final Fantasy VIII - Pretty similar take , i love the mood and the setting, its a beautiful game, it was my first FF game and i just don't care about the problems with the story, people have also been exagerating how hard to get the GF system is since that Spoony video.
8 year olds in the 90s could figure out junctioning but its too much for 40 yr old retro youtubers apparently. Every modern review is the same copypaste parroting pretty much the same points from the spoony video and people calling it the "black sheep" of FF, weird because the game was very well regarded and commercially succesful at launch, even the remaster sold crazy well despite revisionists still claiming everyone always hated it and no one ever liked it.

Now there's a trend of zoomers shitting on Ocarina of time because "achsually it sucks". Always liked Majora better but people shitting on Ocarina are the pinacle of "opinion automatically discarded"
 
Pokémon Gold I think is one for me. Besides coming out in the right time of my life, it took everything about the first game and made it better. It doubled the map size, almost doubled the number of Pokémon, and had some great features that were almost unheard of in video games, like a real day/night feature based on an internal clock.

People talk about the game's fault--it wasn't as well balanced as the first game (easy dungeons, joke Gym Leaders until you hit Whitney), less Pokémon types available, and the neutering of Kanto...but even the last one it was cool because not only was it in full color, but it gave the feeling that you had already won and were examining a changed landscape. Lavender Town and Viridian Forest had remixed, more peaceful-sounding music, and the differences in Mt. Moon were great to see too.
 
Final Fantasy IV. Played the game when I was young and first exploring video games, and it was the first game I ever played to have a story and characters that I actually gave a shit about. It's not a perfect game, and isn't the best FF game, but it's still my favorite, and I still go back and replay it every once in a while.
 
Gran Turismo 4
Need for Speed Underground 1
 
The Mana series is a weird one, they put out three bangers in a row and then it was just endless diarrhea from then on.
I will defend Legend of Mana with my dying breath. Beautiful soundtrack and graphics, and a neat approach to storytelling. Instead of a massive overarcing story like most fantasy games, it takes a kind of short story anthology approach with little vignettes for different characters. Not many other games have done this and it works really well.

As for other ones.

Suikoden 2/5

Etrian Odyssey (any of them)

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne

Medal of Honour/MOH Underground

Afrika

The SSI Goldbox D&D games

Doom
 
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My criteria here, to avoid this turning into just a massive list of games that I love is that it has to still be fun today, and not just because of nostalgia. There's a lot of old games that I used to love that I've tried to go back and replay, and they just end up pissing me off for one reason or another. I'll toss "Magic Carpet" out as an example, but it's only one example of many. I could name others. The original Elite, Starflight, a lot of old platformers like Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden - don't get me wrong, I still play them sometimes, but I'm playing them because of the nostalgia. Hell, I would include DOOM in that list, as heretical as that is.


The first 3 3D GTA games, from back when Rockstar was still making zany, over-the-top shlock and not trying to be artsy and pretentious about it.

Sins of a Solar Empire. I consider this to be one of the last of the good "true" RTS games, even if it was sort of a 4x-lite, and it ushered the genre out in good form. I still wish it had had true 3D movement, like Homeworld did, but honestly I don't know that it would have added anything beyond pleasing my inner nerd.

Warhammer: Dawn of War. Another of the last of the "true" RTS games, and more so a true RTS game than Sins. Sadly some of the later expansions, while fun, really fucked the balance up in Multiplayer... I'm looking at you, Necrons... But a really solid game, and one of the best 40k games.

Super Mario World. Mario hit it's zenith here. Don't get me wrong, the earlier games were fun - Mario 3 in particular - and some of the later games were "fine", but none of the follow-up 2D mario games really improved the formula. They just complicated it, add new powerups and enemies and stuff, but SMW was basically perfect as-is.

Minecraft. Gods help me, I know, it's autistic digital lego, but I've sunk so many hours into it I don't care. It's fun, and relaxing, and I get to build neat things.

Kerbal Space Program. Not 2. 2 is a hot mess. But the first game... Holy crap, this was one of those lightning in a bottle things. It made the complex fun, even if it did simplify it massively.

Diablo 1. 2 was probably arguably the better game, but 1 had an atmosphere that 2 didn't even get close to, and I admire the purity and simplicity of what 1 was.

Sim City 3000 and Sim City 4. Both still hold up. I know 3000 was a bit of a redheaded stepchild of the franchise, but it's basically all the good of 2000, with a slicker coat of paint.

Daggerfall: This is probably slightly breaking my own rules, because I'm sure a lot of people would argue it's not fun anymore, but damnit, I still have fun with it, and it shot for the moon. Missed it, left Earth orbit and wound up orbiting the sun, stranding the astronauts and was a huge embarrassment, but it tried!

...

I could probably make this list 3 or 4 times longer, easily. But for now, it will do.

RAD Robot Alchemical Drive

Holy crap. Not nearly good enough to be on the list, for me, but it's nice to find someone else that's both heard of and liked the game!
 
Final Fantasy X, X-2 and XIII
Bayonetta
Mass Effect 1-3
Silent Hill 1-4 and Shattered Memories
Haunting Ground
Rule of Rose
Soulcalibur II
Ico
Parasite Eve
Resident Evil 4
Until Dawn
Dark Cloud
Skyrim
Lollipop Chainsaw
Left 4 Dead
Sword of Mana
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Ages
Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
A Dog’s Life

This isn’t so much a list of favorites as it is of games I’ll always remember fondly for a variety of reasons. Some were my nostalgic first entries to a particular series or genre, others I feel are underrated, and others still are just overall memorable. Or all of the above.
 
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The entirety of Treasure's output in the era before full 3D dominance. Dynamite Headdy, Gunstar Heroes, Silhouette Mirage, Alien Soldier, Mischief Makers, Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun are the ones that specifically come to mind.

Fucking criminal how hard they got shafted by the shift to 3D hardware when all they wanted to do was make fun 2D games with high skill ceilings. They were just getting their legs under them on the psx/saturn when the shift to full 3D happened and their publisher strongarmed them into releasing an unfinished tech demo as a full game which tanked them.
 
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I cant tell you how good or bad it actually is. But Freedom Force is always top tier stuff to me. Superhero shit has been done to death in the past decade and I'm fucking tired of it. There is something I can't help but respect about a bunch of people wanting to pay tribute to a certain era of capes and I think that love really shows through, especially considering they self-published the second game.

I know part of it comes down to the fact that superheroes was a slightly more novel setting 20 years ago compared to now. But man i love how hard they leaned into the goofy tights and cornball shit. The game underneath was very fun. Really solid tactical squad game with a lots of customization & mod friendly. Plenty of base assets to play around with, custom characters had so many options and the amount of shit you could change with how their powers worked reminded me a lot of how the old Elder Scrolls games handled spell creation.
Man I loved FF. I liked loading hero mods and making my own heroes. Used to have a huge community with 1000s of meshes and animations. It's all pretty much gone now... Lost to time... It had every conceivable hero from comics up to 2010. Niche ones like the Maxx and Howard the Duck. It was amazing making your own team of supervillains and setting them up against the entire Justice League. There's nothing, and will never be anything like it ever again; and it's all lost to time.
 
Blood (1997): pretty much the perfect oldschool FPS. Every single weapon is viable. The maps and atmosphere are fantastic. An incredibly sick chaotic neutral main character. Tons of gore especially for 97. Enemy variety is just about perfect and the difficulty can still kick your ass at Extra Crispy. Unlike Doom, there's no "gentlemen's choice" difficulty method and everyone just defaults to Extra Crispy. The default difficulty is more than enough and Extra Crispy is when you get a handle of the map and enemy spawns.

There's still content being made almost 30 years later too.

 
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest was the first video game I ever played. I was impressed by the shift between night and day. Its considered a bad game, one of the reasons you had to buy a magazine to beat it at the time. Those were the micro transactions back then.

Grand Theft Auto atmosphere, soundtrack, story, gameplay it was perfect.

Max Payne going into bullet time shooting mobsters in Noir York City.

Saints Row was a real sandbox game with some of the best customization and Stilwater is one of my favorite maps.

Scarface: The World Is Yours had a good drug dealing mini game that would cause anxiety which made it immersive.

The Godfather games had the extortion mechanic which was fun, knowing what is a shop keepers breaking point in order to get the maximum payout without failing was a nice challenge. GF 2 has don's view and I would send my soldiers to takeover a business while I waited in the car.

Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines will always be my favorite RPG.
 
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