Top 5 Video Games?

[screwDriver]

My Top 5 but it's difficult to rank them as I loved them in different ways. So in no particular order, well, probably chronologically...

Lode Runner - a real oldie from the early 80's Commodore. I was the best player among my friends. I did over a 120 levels in a day, and that was like our record and lasted about 8 hrs straight. My friend, however, was the undisputed champion among us with Galaxian.

BattleTech: The Cresent Hawk Inception - Not really the best game but it was the one game that led me to appreciate Turn-Based games that eventually led me to engross in the rich and adventurous world of Role Playing Games.

Prophecy - An old game from the early 90's, I think. It plays like Diablo, the hack and slash style but instead of the role playing element, you got a ton of puzzle solving.

Planescape: Torment - Not exactly great graphics but the game system used eventually led me to hours and hours of playing those D&D games from WotC (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights series). Not to mention that the story was probably my all time favorite one in video games.

Silent Storm - Turn-based, action-based, RPG WWII game with multiple camera that's configurable. An arsenal of weapons at your disposal that's based on the period. A decent story, somewhat repetitive but it got me hooked.

[IshMEL]

What, no love for Grim Fandango?

[davidlhsl]

Let's see what I've got. My criteria: the games I put the most time into playing. I see folks have included computer games, so I'll split my list between computer and arcade. My memory is fading on the details on some of these.

Arcade

Joust (both arcade and Atari Lynx): You're a knight mounted on an ostrich, and the ostrich's wings flap with your button presses. You try to collide with the other knights with height advantage. My favorite quarter chugger.

Sonic the Hedgehog: (many versions) I preferred Sega to Nintendo, and the speed of this game was exhilarating. Yes, Sega's term "blast processing" was a marketing gimmick, but I'm a sucker.

Tron Deadly Discs: This was a game for the Mattel Intellivision gaming console, which was the first console I purchased.

Minestorm: This was the game embedded in the GCE Vectrex console that played if you didn't have a cartridge inserted. My dad and I were addicted to this for a time as we took turns beating the other's high score. Good times.

Soul Caliber: I had this on the Sega Dreamcast and played this quite a bit with my nephews when they were young.




Computer

Warlords III - Darklords Rising: This was my favorite version of the Empire-type games. You start in one city, and explore the rest of the map. Each city you conquer produces more units. Empire Deluxe is a close runner-up and was built on global conquest instead of fantasy.

Unreal Tournament: I can't recall which version I played to death, but this was a great FPS.

Dungeon Hack: Fantastic dungeon crawler provided in a first person perspective. It was similar in concept to Nethack, but with better graphics.

Puzzle Quest: Amazing implementation of the Match-3 games. I have this on my iPad.

Pretty Good Solitaire: Solitaire card games are my one true gaming love out of all the games available. I don't recall when I first got this, but I've been following its development over its long history. I still play this. Shout out to the old-timers: Solitaire's Journey by QQP was the first solitaire card game computer implementation I fell in love with (unrelated to PGS, though).



Bonus Selection - both Arcade and Computer

Sid Meier's C.P.U. Bach: Arcade (Panasonic 3DO)
Brian Eno's 77 Million Paintings: Computer

Both of these blew my widdle mind. They both fall in the category of generative systems.

C.P.U. Bach composed baroque style music on the fly. You had some parameters you could adjust, then you selected whatever option to create the piece. An image of Bach sitting at his organ writing on parchment appeared as the program was "thinking," and then it played the piece it just created. Since I'm not a critical listener, I couldn't evaluate the quality. However, I didn't notice a lot of difference in the final output based on the options you could select.

77 Million Paintings is an amazing generative system that creates artwork on the fly by combining various pre-created elements in various combinations, and the composed "painting" slowly morphs on your computer monitor. There's an ambient music component that plays along with it, but it's not as interesting. This program has been presented as installations in various museums around the world.

[jschild]

Originally Posted by screwDriver

My Top 5 but it's difficult to rank them as I loved them in different ways. So in no particular order, well, probably chronologically...

Lode Runner - a real oldie from the early 80's Commodore. I was the best player among my friends. I did over a 120 levels in a day, and that was like our record and lasted about 8 hrs straight. My friend, however, was the undisputed champion among us with Galaxian.

BattleTech: The Cresent Hawk Inception - Not really the best game but it was the one game that led me to appreciate Turn-Based games that eventually led me to engross in the rich and adventurous world of Role Playing Games.

Prophecy - An old game from the early 90's, I think. It plays like Diablo, the hack and slash style but instead of the role playing element, you got a ton of puzzle solving.

Planescape: Torment - Not exactly great graphics but the game system used eventually led me to hours and hours of playing those D&D games from WotC (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights series). Not to mention that the story was probably my all time favorite one in video games.

Silent Storm - Turn-based, action-based, RPG WWII game with multiple camera that's configurable. An arsenal of weapons at your disposal that's based on the period. A decent story, somewhat repetitive but it got me hooked.

I highly recommend the fan-based mods for Planescape - Higher resolutions make the game beautiful again (other than the rare cutscene). Same with the BG2 mod that puts BG into the BG2 engine, allowing you to up the resolution while playing with all the new classes..

[Arch-vile]

Hmmm. I can't pick only five! Well, the games I have invested the most time/soul in are:

Metal Gear Solid 3/4
Pokemon Emerald (I play every new pokemon game though)
Super Mario Galaxy 1/2
Mario Kart DS (I still think this is the greatest MK game)
Star Wars Battlefront 1/2 (I prefer 1)
Madden football
Civilization 3/4/Revolution
Warcraft 3
Roller Coaster Tycoon 2
Dragon Age Origins

Those are the ones I've liked the most. I still play most on occasion.

[Gardevoir]

1) Super Smash Bros. Brawl
2) Pokemon Black
3) Super Smash Bros. Melee
4) Soulcalibur 4
5) Skylanders Spyro's Adventure :P

[capsocrates]

Spoiler Alert!

Grim Fandango is on my list of games to play someday, but I've never had the opportunity. I've also heard great things about Planescape: Torment, and would really like to play it someday.

I'm going to cheat a little and pick some of my favorite games from 5 subgenres.

Portal is a great game. Half Life 2 was one of the first shooters in which I really got "into it." Ravenholm in particular had me shaking with adrenaline and jumping in my seat. I played on the highest difficulty and I'm not really a great FPS player, so I spent most of the game (and Ravenholm in particular), almost out of ammo, just barely making it from checkpoint to checkpoint. I loved the whole experience. Starsiege: Tribes was one of my first FPS experiences and is probably still my favorite multiplayer FPS game to date. I enjoy the sequels also. I also really enjoy playing Halo 3 on the 360 with my friends, although I haven't done it in years. I never really played the first two games.

I've loved every Civilization game I've ever played. I started with II years ago and also played a lot of III. Still haven't really got my hands on IV and V. Revolutions is great fun, but its too short.

Battle for Wesnoth is another great "one more turn" game, but I separate it from Civ because its purely combat oriented, unlike Civ--its a lot more like Heroscape. The campaigns are challenging, the multiplayer is fun, and there are a lot of cool scenarios and factions available for download. The game is open source, free, and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, so I play it with many of my friends because its so portable, easy to learn, and even runs on older computers fairly well. Its not exactly one of my favorite games "of all time", necessarily (it doesn't have the same nostalgia for me as other games on this list), but I play it often and enjoy it.

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings with the Age of Conquerors Expansion. Maybe there are better RTS's out there, but I've never put so many hours into a strategy game as I have this one (although Civ might beat it altogether, but I'm doubtful). Definitely one of my all-time favorites. Starcraft is great too. I'm just now getting to try SCII. Not sure how it compares yet, but I'm having fun.

Icewind Dale II is a great RPG. I love the use of D&D mechanics, the campaign is varied and interesting, and character development (i.e. leveling up) is really fun. Knights of the Old Republic had a great story and a lot of fun gameplay. KotOR II had better gameplay, but the story was weaker.

[Eraguy816]

Age of Empires is awesome. I think joan d' arc is the best.
Have you (Capsocrates) played Robin Hood Legend of Sherwood?

[capsocrates]

Originally Posted by Eraguy816

Age of Empires is awesome. I think joan d' arc is the best.
Have you (Capsocrates) played Robin Hood Legend of Sherwood?

I don't think I have.

[Neo]

Originally Posted by Eraguy816

Age of Empires is awesome. I think joan d' arc is the best.
Have you (Capsocrates) played Robin Hood Legend of Sherwood?

I like the Portuguese.

[tubafication]

5) Top Spin 4
I can think of a ton of other sports games that do not capture the essence of the sport (Madden anyone?). But Top Spin really got tennis right, doesn't hurt that I play tennis myself. The menu music is putrid though. Also doesn't hurt that it has my future wife Eugenie "Genie" Bouchard.

4) Ace Combat 4
5, 6, Zero, and X are great, no doubt. But 4 was really amazing and really standardized the formula for Ace Combats (Except that stupid Assault Horizon). The story was deep and depressing showing all of the pain and suffering you were putting on the enemy, rather than showing only your heroics. The combat was a good mix of simulation and arcade. Plus the graphics were wonderful for the time, and the soundtrack is awesome and well done.

3) Rune Factory Frontier
I have no clue why exactly I enjoyed this game. I find farming rudimentary (at least on video games, actually also in real life, but no offense intended to the profession...), and making friends isn't any fun. But I really enjoyed this game. For the record, I enjoyed RF Frontier, RF3, RF Tides of Destiny, and RF2 in that order, and also the Harvest Moons, but I figured I should pick one. Plus, Frontier has my future wife Melody.

2) Soul Calibur IV
The others were great, yes. But IV was not only the first I played, but had great graphics combined with a robust combat engine. The intricacies involved in Soul Calibur are mind blowing which makes it so replayable. Plus, it has my future wife Amy.

1) Persona 3
So maybe Persona 4 is better (actually it probably is) but I have yet to play it so. I really enjoyed this game because I'm such a sucker for depressing video games, and Persona 3 really scratched that itch to be sad while playing a game. Plus, 100 hours in a PS2 game is huge (the FES version has about 100). The combat is satisfying for a JRPG and the Social Links are fun to pursue. Persona 5 will only be better too.