this is fun

E.V.O.: This game stands out to me as an example of creativity. The game itself is basically level grinding, upgrading, and beat-em-up fighting. Constantly changing your character (both in the sense of evolving/upgrading it, and in actually playing as a fish, a reptile, a mammal, etc.) kept me interested. It demonstrates that a good game doesn't need to rely on any preset formula.

Leisure suit larry: I'm talking about the old DOS ones, the ones I played when my parents weren't around. Of course this one demonstrates that games aren't just for kids, but what I really liked was how it presented a quality of writing in game format. It helps me realize that a computer game can be another method of writing a story, albeit interactively.

Old NES games that are impossibly hard and yet horribly addictive. I like these kinds of games, and it inspires me to keep my games from being "entertainment experiences." Mine shall be challenges.

Daggerfall: I've played through both Morrowind and Oblivion, but for me Daggerfall was a much heartier experience. Both of the latter felt dry and empty, I felt, despite the plethora of items and weapons to sift through. Morrowind was ok (Oblivion is pretty good modded... i was so bored though with the vanilla install), but for some reason Daggerfall's cities seemd more alive to me. Venturing into one of the vast caves in that game was exciting, and leveling up / upgrading your equipment was a difficult but rewarding task. This game really opened my eyes to the possibilities of a huge world. I also enjoyed Redguard a great deal; excellent sword fighting in that game, beautiful (for the time) graphics, great story, etc.

MUDs: Way back in the day, when I was an AOL kid, I payed to play a medieval fantasy MUD they offered. It was very confusing at first, but as I slowly figured out how to move around, how to interact with people, how to fight, I became addicted. The vast array of commands made me feel as though I could literally do anything, and since the "graphics" were all just my imagination, I really felt immersed in a fantasy medieval setting. It was almost like being a character in a book that was being written in real-time. And the economics of that MUD were incredibly harsh. Fight by yourself and it would take you weeks to save up for even a simple short sword. Fight in a group and divvy the profits, however, and you could do substantially better. Still, the high prices and even more-so the difficulty in obtaining gold made me seriously appreciate the line of text that popped up when I typed "Inventory" which said "Broadsword." Nothing like the thousands of weapons in Oblivion, the hundreds in Diablo, etc.

Starflight 1 & 2
-----------------
I love this game because its one of the games you can play still after some years
and dont look at the graphics.
From beginning till the end of the game you where so motivated to find more and more planets and other secrets. :)

Deus Ex & Deus Ex Invisible Wars
--------------------------------
I love the story behind this game so much. It has nice elements of each factor of gameplay. You play this game and you feel like beeing part of a nice film.


Neverwinter Nights & Expansions
-------------------------------
For me one of the beste single roleplay games ever made for pc. nice story. nice graphics. nice gameplay.

Elite Frontier
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The name says it all :)
Free gameplay in all aspect. You can do what you want.

Jagged Alliance
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Superb game. Best characters ever made for a game like this.
You will love every soldier you hire after a while.
I always liked GRUNTY ! :)

System Shock 2
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This has the best atmosphere i every seen in a game i have played.
Well designed. Nice story. Very good gameplay. Alot of motivation to reach next skills etc..


I could write alot of more games. But this are the games that comes directly to my mind.

sorry for bad english :)

Quote:

Original post by Funkymunky Final Fantasy: By this I mean the old final fantasies, the 2 dimensional ones. Specifically, FF I, FF II (4) and FF III (6). These games I loved for their story, their character development and plottwists.

I don't really think those Final Fantasies had any plot. It was more like, save the crystals and/or collect the crystals.

FF VI was probably the first to conjure up any real plot (although TBH, I wouldn't know about FF III (the actual 3rd one), I haven't played it yet).

I don't really play many video games, but if I had to pick a favorite, I'd choose Crazy Arcade. It's a Korean game, so none of you probably know what it is. Fast-paced, cartoony Bomberman clone. Oh, and instead of bombs, you use water balloons.

Try looking it up on Wikipedia!

Favorite Games and most inspiring are usually one and the same for me, in no particular order,

RESIDENT EVIL 4: This game is incredibly fun. The controls are perfect, enemy reactions are perfect, it has amazing art direction and graphics, and an incredibly executed story.

BATTLEFIELD 1942: Terrific online, and one of the few FPS's out there that isn't just a massive explodium-fest (not that I have anything against those...) and encourages stratagy.

MARIO 64: Easily the best 3-D platformer ever made, with bright, bubbly graphics and unforgettable levels. Mario has amazing control, and the idea to link 100% completion and normal advancement is such a perfect way is genius.

SUPER MARIO ALL-STARS: Best game ever made!

What not to do in a game? Make it exactly like WoW. Why? Because if your game is exactly like WoW, what makes it better in any way, and worth buying instead?

This isn't just to all the "LOOKING FOR C++ PROGRAMMER [MMORPG]" people on the site, but to some other, more professional copycats.

Favorite games:
1) Ice Hockey for the NES - It's the simple easy to learn difficult to master, add in some crazy intense action and sprinkle in some humor and you have Ice Hockey.
2) Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction - I've never been able to pin down exactly what makes this game so fun for me, but whenever I pick it back up, I spend at least 40 hours with it.
3) Grand Theft Auto - An overhead carjacking game that lets me run my friends over, shoot them or alternatively blow them up. Again it's very simple with some intense action.
4) Super Smash Bros Melee - A fighting game that follows the simple to pick up, intense action, etc, etc. (Noticing a theme developing here)
5) Team Fortress 2 - This game allows me to play the game effectively pretty much however I want to, and the different classes in the game seem to respond to whatever mood I'm in, so I always feel in the mood for a game of TF2.

Most inspiring games:
1) Portal - It's just so different and blends a lot of things together
2) Daggerfall - The game is so huge it's staggering, which is no small feat for a DOS game
3) Elite Beat Agents - again, it's what can happen when conventions are defied
4) Serious Sam - This goes the other way, and shows how good something can be just by returning to the traditional conventions then improving upon them
5) Phantasy Star 2 - It's insane how quickly a game can go from bright and cheery to a general feeling of doom, I like it.

How not to do it:
1) Billy the Wizard Rocket Broomstick racing - One of the biggest things of a good racing game is the control, and when you can barely control what you're racing the game quickly gets old.
2) Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing - What is it with bad racing games? This one really suffers from not being finished at any level, see the gamespot review for why, the one thing I do find humorous is that they did release a patch for it to add collision and make your opponent move, but it's still horribly broken
3) Dragon's Lair(NES) - A game that's based on constant failure then starting over because you didn't dodge the snake that pops out of nowhere
4) Hellgate:London - Way overhyped, and extremely repetitive, top it up with technical issues, and you get a game where the verb flagshipped came from.
5) Final Doom - There's many titles that fit this here, but there's only so much you can milk a game before people get tired of it.

Quote:

Original post by Daedalus AI Quote: Original post by Funkymunky Final Fantasy: By this I mean the old final fantasies, the 2 dimensional ones. Specifically, FF I, FF II (4) and FF III (6). These games I loved for their story, their character development and plottwists. I don't really think those Final Fantasies had any plot. It was more like, save the crystals and/or collect the crystals. FF VI was probably the first to conjure up any real plot (although TBH, I wouldn't know about FF III (the actual 3rd one), I haven't played it yet).

I think the number in the brackets is the japanese number of the games

[Edited by - eedok on April 27, 2008 2:01:50 AM]

Favorite Games
1) Turtles in Time: Kick some shell, simple and good
2) Super Mario Kart 64: Battle mode
3) Goldeneye: Often emulated but never surpassed
4) Metal Gear Solid: a smoking hero
5) Starfox 64: "Do a barrel roll"

Games that seemed cool but never really got into
1) Americans Mcgees' Alice
2) Max Payne
3) Final Fantasy 7: made it to disk 2

Things not to do
Final Fantasy 10:
If you add cutscenes keep them skippable

Xenosaga:
While I loved the game, I sure dont want to watch an anime while playing a game... keep the videos short



[Edited by - Aiursrage on April 30, 2008 11:02:29 AM]

Something like this

1. Metal Gear Solid (along with remake The Twin Snakes)
2. Resident Evil 4

Those are the only two games I consistently call my favorite.

Other games I really enjoy(ed) include

1. Ocarina of Time
2. Twilight Princess
3. Pokemon Series
4. Mega Man Series

Other time sinks include

1. All Blizzard Products
2. UT99 and other Unreal Tournament games (just not as much as UT99)

I think that is mostly it. I play a wide variety of games and usually buy a lot only to play them for a couple of hours. Sucks really.

Top 5 games?

Honestly, that's hard, as I do have guilty pleasure games, but here are a few (no specific order)...

Quest for Glory 2: A very good blend of an adventure game and an RPG. Also, it feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon than a 4 hour long epic movie. And despite being an adult, sometimes I just want to watch cartoons **** IT!

Ultima VII: As mentioned, it was a very immensly detailed world. Probably as close to an RPG as has ever been done on the computer. And 16 years after it's been released, no RPG has even remotely come close to it's interactivity. (It's easily the best RPG I've played).

Deadline: I'm a sucker for mystery games. One of the best text adventures I've played. This is a game I would really like to see remade in a fashion similar to The Last Express.

Inspirational games:

System Shock 2: A very goo blend of genres, and an incredible atmosphere.

Betrayal at Krondor: Probably the best story I've seen in a video game. One of the few video games that I felt I was also reading a good novel.

The Last Express: A game that played in Real Time. And the game had great acting for a video game (the people who spoke German really spoke German, French, etc...) Never the same game twice because it was real time. While I still can't forgive Brøderbund for the travesty that was Myst, The Last Express was an excellent game.

The Oregon Trail: I can't tell you how many hours I wasted on this. A very good educational game.

Good Examples of What Not to Do:

Wizardry IV: I love Wizardry, I won't lie. And I even like IV in a masochistic way. The problem with Wizardry IV was that it was targetted towards it's target audience only. Having a target audience is good, but your audience will almost never grow unless you try to keep it as well as expand your audience into a new generation. Plus, the game might have been a bit too hard and unforgiving for anyone who was not extremely hardcore to get into. I'm not talking hard as just a hard RPG. I'm talking Ghouls N Ghosts hard. Now apply that to an RPG.

Any game by Looking Glass. Excellent games. Years ahead of their time. Think Half Life, Tribes, etc, only 3-5 years earlier. Only one small problem. Nobody played them. It doesn't matter how good your game is if no one knows about it. Proof that you need to market your game.

King's Quest: Mask of Eternity. I'm a very big adventure game fan. I love the King's Quest series. But not MoE. This is selling out at it's very best. You basically take a best selling franchise, and rather than adopt elements of the taste of the day, you basically screw your original audience, which made you what you were, and go after a completely different audience. This to me was the start of the downfall of Sierra. Proof that even the biggest company of it's market can be reduced to a nobody.

Side note - The games listed here could be compiled into a list that would be far better as a list of 'games all designers should play' which is currently stickied at the top of this forum.

My picks for top 5:

Diablo 2 with Lord of Destruction.
With the LoD expansion pack, there was a lot more strategic variety (2 new character classes, more interesting loot (reward) options, and better skill balance), and levelling became significantly less painful (more fun). Blizzard's terrific UI and high quality artwork (their hallmarks imo) gave the system long-term appeal and classic status.

Head over Heels
Super-cute arcade puzzle game with beautiful game design and excellent artwork.

Master of Orion 2
Fantastic 4X. Great graphics with a well-designed tech system and combat mechanics. Multiplayer means it beats Master of Magic for 4X champion.

Warhammer: Dark Omen (and SOTHR)
RTS miles ahead of its time. 3D terrain, visibility modelled, and solid combat mechanics. Very engaging with good multiplayer too.

Guild Wars
A huge amount of strategic variety, excellent game mechanics, and pretty much the best setup for competitive gameplay.


A couple of games I wish I never played:

World of Warcraft
This is a terrible game. Its mechanics are fundamentally flawed, and continually hacked to maintain some semblance of balance. Gameplay is simplistic and repetitive. So why did I spend a lot of time on this game? Well firstly it has an excellent UI, and secondly it is pretty much the only way to stay in touch with some of my friends. It's like fantasy Facebook.

Armageddon Empires
How could I list this here? It has beautiful artwork, and is a very interesting TBS, which is one of my favourite genres. Yet it has a shockingly bad user interface, and it is only playable single-player, with super-weak AI. It's frustrating to see such a potentially classic game let down so badly.