From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.
See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Not a unique opinion, but Portal is probably the closest thing to a perfect game. Nothing feels unnecessary, and every part of it (story, gameplay, visuals) is not only good on its own, but also work together to make the game better than the sum of its parts.
Portal 2's also great but suffers from a lot of fluff imo. The analogy I like to use is Portal 2 is like a big feast of really good food, while Portal 1 is just one small dish, but it's the best version of that dish you've ever tasted.
Morrowind. It was such a magical experience to play it. The world was mysterious and beautiful. I fondly remember the first night as I walked to Balmora. I gazed at the starry sky and at that point the game had me. The game was difficult - you had to find quest locations by mere descriptions of them. As a result you got lost in the game a lot - both metaphorically and literally.
I still play Morrowind! So happy to see this comment here so I didn't have to type it first lol
With Tamriel Rebuilt it's like a whole new game! The preceding elder scrolls games lose that TTRPG feel that I love about Morrowind. Once you understand it's all based on dice rolls (using a d100 not a d20) the skills and combat make much more sense to somebody looking at it with a modern lense. OpenMW is a must for modern systems for anybody looking to dip their toes in though (it replaces the original engine). With OpenMW I'm up to ~200 mods with exceptional frame rates. The original engine with a lesser setup only gets like 13 fps outside lol
Morrowind was a life changer for my 17 year old self. I still love the outlandish look and feel of that game. It looks so franco-belgian comic book inspired. Like playing a Moebius open world game!
If you liked Morrowind, I suggest you give Kingdom Come: Deliverance a try! While still not quite the same as Morrowind, it's the first game since that came close to the same sense of wonderment.
But yeah, even after all these years I get goosebumps and a slight sense of wanderlust and amazement as soon as I hear the drums of the Morrowind OST drums kick in.
Are you me? I could not describe it better.
Some other mentions for me would be: Heroes of Might and Magic 1-3, Diablo 2, Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines, and of course Duke Nukem 3D.
And plenty others I forgot right now.
Final Fantasy Tactics(PS1) remains my favorite game to this day. I really liked messing with the various classes and abilities, and it's a rock-solid tactics game, to boot. Couple that with amazing music and a great political story, and you've got a classic.
TG Cid is hilariously broken, though.
FFT has an active modding scene, too. Lots of rom hacks are still being made for the PS1 and PSP versions of the game.
One of my all-time favourites is Freelancer, 2003. Just a really fun arcade space sandbox with an engaging campaign and great multiplayer and modding scene.
My response to this will look like a who’s who of Dreamcast games. The Dreamcast was the first console I bought myself, so I have lots of fond memories.
I'm going to go waaay back to a gem of a '90s CRPG: Betrayal at Krondor.
The main quest-line was engaging, the combat was cool, and the puzzle boxes were fun, but I remember being blown away by the size of the world. You could wander for literally hours, exploring new terrain, and discovering additional characters and bonus quest-lines. Its world was expansive and immersive, and it felt alive, like nothing else playable on a 386sx ever had been before.
The next time I felt that sense of aliveness - but better - in a video game was about a decade later, when I took my first Wyvern ride in World of Warcraft, and realized that everything I was seeing below me was really happening. This wasn't a teleport: if you saw someone fighting something down below you, it was because another player was really fighting something down there. Mind-blowing!
Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, all of these still hold up, and are totally worth a play even if you never played them back in their day.
Also, Alpha Centauri has SUCH a great narrative. Each faction has a strong identity, each leader has a fitting personality, the whole package is great.
It really deserves a remake to update the controls and UI, it still plays really well if you can get past that though.
I loved the bullet time in OG Max Payne game (2001).
I was addicted to EverQuest since I started playing it in 2001 for at least 10 years. They don't call it "EverCrack" for nothing. No matter how I feel about it now, it will always hold a special place in my heart.
I also played PlanetSide MMOFPS for at least 4 years since it released back in 2003, and it was so great. I hear both good and bad things about its successor, PlanetSide 2, but haven't tried it for the fear of it ruining my nostalgia of the original.
Starsiege: Tribes was an awesome game too. I was a beta tester for that one way back in '98, in the days before broadband was a thing. I still have an installation CD hand-signed by the devs that they had to ship to all the testers, because downloading 500+ MB over dial-up was not feasible.
Earthsiege 2 was the game for which I went out to CompUSA and bought a joystick that had swivel function (MS SideWinder 3D Pro).
Soldier of Fortune. I will remember that whistle darn it!
But I lived through the golden era of arena shooters such as Quake III and UT2K4 which was amazing, but most of all the whole FPS genre was really ramping up to new heights every month back then with HL2/CoD and mods such as Counter Strike, Garry's Mod and the like.
Oh man, I remember when Soldier of Fortune came out. It was the first FPS (that I was aware of at least) that had dismemberment. I remember my mind become completely blown after shooting a guy's legs off with a shotgun.
Nowadays, it's nothing special, but back then it was insane.
I played Max Payne and its sequal recently and I was surprised how well they held up. The gameplay and level design kept it consistently fun
Beyond Good & Evil, 2003. It's been so long since I played it, I don't remember much other than it was a sandbox and it had some neat mechanics and cute characters and I loved it. The closing credits musical sequence is magical, too.
No spoilers please but I'm finally sitting down to playthrough and beat the original Deus Ex. Installed GMDX mod and have been having a blast so far!
Oh you are in for a treat! I'm thrilled for you.
All I will say is experiment. Follow that "huh I wonder if?" relentlessly.
For me it was metal gear solid 3 snake eater. I thought it was the perfection of the metal gear formula. I’m exited to see its remaster.
Had a partner want to practice hacking a 3ds before they closed the shop so I can play PS1 games. The first one I put on that mofo is Azure Dreams, my first and probably favorite dungeon crawler roguelike with a city builder. Also Breath of Fire IV is one of my absolute favorite games ever.
I haven't even heard of either of these so I'm definitely going to have to check them out!
This could be answered with a huge chunk of the Dreamcast library: Chuchu Rocket, Mr. Driller, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5, Samba de Amigo,...
The Dreamcast was amazing at arcade games (games you can start playing fast), and with unique and incredible style. The whole platform was truly innovative and ahead of its time.
There's always Diablo 1.
But my favorite is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, which was made by some of the people who created Fallout and has a LOT in common with it. It's an open world, a combination of classic fantasy with elves, dwarves, and halflings with a rising steampunk technology that competes with magic. There are many schools of magic and technology, as well as social, stealth, and combat skills. The graphics are very crude by today's standards, but the gameplay is outstanding.
I’d gently push back on the premise and say gaming, of all hobbies, fetishizes nostalgia. It’s common to say “games aren’t made like they used to be.”
That aside, a game I haven’t seen replicated recently is Gauntlet Legends. My siblings and I spent so much time playing that and, despite its relatively shallow mechanics, it’s so satisfying.
Really? It's common for someone into books to be recommends books from 200 years ago. If you're a self titled film buff but wont check out black and white you'll get laughed at.
Yet gaming media and communities tend to focus on upcoming releases, often ceasing discussion of titles days after released. Certainly it's rare as hell for people to play things from before they were born.
I find it’s hard to even find recommended movies from more than a few years ago… Everybody seems to focus on the new, which just seems bizarre to me — we have a huge catalog! I guess with games it’s partially that console generations make it harder to just pick up old games. It’s easier to jump into something old on PC, but a little harder on consoles to go back a few generations…
That said I really think there’s a lot of great old games, and while there’s some that are interesting but don’t hold up graphically (and maybe you can’t see past that), there’s many where that’s not super relevant either (particularly for stylized 2D games which tend to hold up better). I like modern games, but it’s nice to see where things came from and I’m always going back to old games I’ve never played before to broaden my catalog and see what we accomplished on weaker hardware. It’s awesome!
Wesnoth is a GPL turn-based strategy game from 2005 which has been installed on every computer I've owned since its debut. The pixel art, sound effects, music, and gameplay depth are wonderful yet it's very easy to learn! There are hundreds of campaigns available for solo play and it has both local and online multiplayer. Team based multiplayer with friends against AI's is a lot of fun and no one gets their feelings hurt if they lose!
Right now I'm playing the white chamber which is a freeware indie horror point and click adventure game from 2005 with a female protagonist. So far it's doing really well at creating a creepy, suspenseful mystery in a foreboding environment. I haven't finished it yet but it's been fun!
As others have mentioned, Neverwinter Nights from 2002 is still unchallenged for community created storytelling and worldbuilding! If you haven't played it then take a look at what's available on The Neverwinter Vault and some of the online realms. A Dance with Rogues is my favorite module and would on its own be one of my favorite games!
Thank you to everyone else who's shared some of their favorites!
Gothic and Gothic 2 + AddOn (2001-2003) are still amazing, and the modding scene keeps it alive to this day (someone even write a DX11 renderer!)
If you're unfamiliar, it's a third person RPG where you play a nameless, snarky dude in a penal mining colony run by the inmates. The overall tone is just incredibly well done, with most NPCs being dicks throughout.
But the best part is the map itself. You can traverse it within minutes, but there's interesting things in every nook and cranny with nothing to guide you. Multiple NPCs will tell you not to go into the woods early on and they're right about it, the enemies inside will wreck you at that stage. All the guidance is all done in-game instead of some UI element blinking on a high-res map (the maps in this game are deliberately vague and you need to actually buy them).
The sequel expand on the first one, updating mechanics and increasing the map size by a substantial margin. Also, people are still dicks outside the prison colony.
Eternal Darkness
Silent Hill
Resident Evil 1+2
Call of Cthulhu
Quake 1-3
Doom 1+2
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy 3, 7, Tactics
Metal Gear Solid (all of them)
Shadowrun (SNES)
Castlevania 1-3, SOTN
I could go on...
Playstation 1 is probably my favourite console, playing it alone or with friends during my formative years... definitely played it more than anything else. I have a few recommendations if you haven't played any PS1 games. I think they're a good starter set! (All are pretty big titles from the platform, no obscure titles here haha)
-Final Fantasy 7. I feel like FF7 is sort of THEE playstation game. The story and world are strong, good writing, maybe one of the best game OSTs of all time...even the potato character graphics are charming. I feels like it was the game that launched the system, or at least got lots of people to buy the system. (I mean, FF8 or FF9 are excellent choices too, 9 is my all-time favourite)
-Parappa the Rappa and Unjammer Lammy - extremely fun and addictive rhythm games. Either one or both, you can't go wrong. Super fun and catchy, very... weird at times but that's part of the charm. Very good to play with friends.
-Silent Hill - the original horror classic. It lives up to its reputation. It's dated in a lot of ways, but the low res graphics make it even creepier somehow. A must play. (Unless you don't like horror, then do not haha)
-Crash Bandicoot Any or all three of them. Awesome platformers. Very fun, though punishingly difficult at times. (the N-Sane Trilogy is the one I had, which includes all three)
-Tekken 3 - my friends and I played this game so much, just an absolutely amazing fighter. It's graphics have definitely aged poorly, but that doesn't matter. It's great fun.
What else would you add to the list, PS1 playing folks?
Shining Force series (Genesis: Game Gear: Saturn) Phenomenal SRPGs that impacted my tastes growing up. Good gameplay, good story. Highly recommended.
Unfortunately some of my favorite games are no longer around in a playable state.
I friggin loved Atlas Reactor but it shutdown in 2019. Another all time favorite, which is still around but does not have the community to keep it feeling alive is: Shattered Galaxy.
Other games I think deserve to be mentioned n the best games of all time list are:
Every Star Wars fan owes it to themselves to play Knights of the Old Republic, at least once. And if you play it once, you'll want to play it through again, as a different character class. And if you play it twice, you'll want to play it through again, as a dark-side Jedi. And if you play it thrice, you may be tempted to play it through again, as a Droid.
It's a wonderful story, that feels like Star Wars (which, for those of us older Star Wars fans, who at the time were suffering through the cumulative disappointments of the prequel trilogy, became our salving solace), with plots and settings and characters and ships and light-sabers and action and betrayals that were (and still are) as rich as any of the movies or shows.
The people who run the franchise keep teasing canonicity, so play it soon, so you'll gasp like we do when Darth Revan makes an appearance.
First 4 Gran turismo games had amazing campaign that isnt grindy and features amazing collection of cars from a golden era. I heavily recommend playing them over an emulator
You want to go WAY back, the old Sierra games back when you still had to type in your commands.
I remember getting a copy of "Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards" from a cousin when I was very young. Much too young for that game! It was on 2x low density 5.25" floppys (320KB storage each!) and labeled "Larry Lizard". It had an age check at the beginning: you had to answer several multiple choice questions that anyone over 18 at the time would know easily. My best friend and I would spend huge amounts of time brute forcing and memorizing the answers so we could play. The game came out in 1987 so I was probably 10-12 years old at this point.
Anyways, yeah, that game was hilarious and led to a long-lasting love of Larry Laffer. It was also a gateway into all the Quest games (Kings Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, etc). No idea if those games are still available but they hold a special place in my heart.
I know "Day of the Tentacle" and "Grim Fandango" are both available in remastered forms (and possibly on Game Pass, IIRC). Slightly later time frame but similar style games and both very good!
EDIT - Oh for PS1 games: Final Fantasy Tactics is sublime, FF7 (the best FF game of all time), Tony Hawk 2, original Tomb Raider. And I never played it, but I've heard great things about PaRappa the Rapper.
I still play Doom 1 & 2 most days. Nothing matches it for speed of play. Doom is fast.
Doom 2016 is a good game too, but I'm it lacks speed.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. My favourite game of all time. I played it long after it had released thanks to the PSOne classics section on the PS3, but far and away it is one of my favourite experiences I've had with gaming. The map is robust, the RPG elements allow for unique experiences each time I've played, and overall it's just complex and challenging enough to keep you engaged, but not frustrating to the point of distress and apathy towards it. Highly recommended as a starting point for the PSOne.
Super Metroid. Similar to what I loved about SoTN, but more obtuse in nature for sure (it came out earlier after all for the SNES). The gameplay and atmosphere of course are great focusing on exploration and a gradual increase in ability lending itself to pursuing more exploration, but even the story is compelling enough to keep you engaged throughout.
Portal. Great puzzle game I've always loved. Challenged the medium when it first came out by taking what the source engine was best at (FPS') and placing it in an environment with little to no combat and the player thinking of ways to overcome each challenge with the tools at their disposal. (Fun story: my cousin was allowed to let me play this when I was younger because it was the only game rated "T" on the Orange box. It's also one of the few games I was able to beat in the hour or two periods we would visit my aunt and uncles' home.). It's short, sweet, and always a good time.
Kirby Air Ride. Last one I can think of but probably the game I've returned to the most. (Including Smash Bros Melee for the same system, also a great game made by the same director and studio.). Overall the "rides" for Kirby are a unique concept, but the game really shines with City Trial, a frantic 5 (or 7 for most people who love the game) minute period of collecting buffs and changing vehicles in order to beat opponents in a randomly selected minigame (race, battle, beat King DeDeDe, etc) at the end. Such a novel concept and one I always love to come back to for a quick game now and then.
I just started Dragon Age: Origins yesterday, not positive but I think it's mid 00's. It's my first time and it's more fun than I've had gaming in some time
TimeShift came out in 2007, and that game was the bomb. Loved the concept with the suits that can control time, and the game play felt really smooth. Nothing beats freezing time and grabbing the enemies' weapons from them and shooting them with it.
Nox is one of the greatest ActionRPGs on PC, and still holds up. The combat is fast and reactive, the environments are incredibly varied, and there are 3 separate single player campaigns; one for each class (warrior, mage, conjurer). And yes, it has multiplayer too.
Freelancer is one of the best open-world space games ever made. Great story, great characters, tons of mods, and multiplayer (including mods on servers, so you can play in a star wars server, then switch to Babylon 5, etc). Phenomenal game.
Impossible Mission - 1984
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Mission
Ride the elevators, avoid the robots, find 36 puzzle pieces. Solve 9 puzzles for shape and color. Save the world!
Civilization III. Still undoubtedly the best from me, every subsequent change to the series has been negative.
For me it will always be Zelda: A Link to the Past. Possibly due to nostalgia more than anything else.
(Also, unrelated but if you liked Chrono Trigger, look into Sea of Stars, an indie game heavily inspired from it. It should release this summer and Yasunori Mitsuda even composed some music tracks for that game!)
Edit : Another game, this one bad, holds a special place in my heart... Final Fantasy Mystic Quest on the SNES as well. The music is great, but the rest, meh. What's special about it is one of my aunt shown me this game when I was a kid and it is what introduced me to the world of Final Fantasy. Unfortunately that aunt died many years ago.
The original Tomb Raider is actually amazing. I rented it when I was a kid and immediately hated it because it wasn't Mario 64 or Crash Bandicoot but I checked it out again as an adult because it was on sale for a dollar and I thought "this used to be a pretty big deal and I'd like to try and see what other people saw in it" and, like, everything I hated about it back then are the same things that made me fall in love with it. 2 and 3 are also solid but neither quite has the magic of 1 because they're too combat focused.
If you're into cinematic platformers like OG Prince of Persia or Oddworld, Tomb Raider is the 3D version of that. It's clunky and robotic but in that precise and predictable way where everything is deliberate and satisfying to pull off. Granted, I played the PC versions so I believe they're a little nicer than the PS1 versions you'd presumably be emulating.
I definitely have a lot that really get me feeling nostalgic. Couldn't even count the hours I spent playing games as a kid lol but here's a random list of a few:
Baldur’s Gate II is and will always be the most influential and important game of my life.