Final Fantasy VII
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
GoldenEye 007
Metal Gear Solid
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
Monkey Island
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Red Dead Redemption 2
Other honorable mentions would be:
Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
XCOM
Quest for Glory III: Wages of War
Based on an incomplete sampling.
Not in any particular order:
Curse of Monkey Island
Final Fantasy VII
SOMA
Stardew Valley
Anno 1800
The Last of Us
The Last of Us 2
Dark Souls 3
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Hades
In no particular order:
I realize I included a lot of games that were sequels or part of a series, but these are my favorite of the series in general.
Honorable Mentions:
Hmm, tough choices. In no particular order.
The Legend of Zelda - A Link To The Past This game was great when it was released and it's great now, and thanks to the randomiser community it's now infinitely replayable as well.
Super Metroid A series that literally helped define a genre, Super Metroid was everything that I suspect they wanted Metroid and Return of Samus to be but the hardware couldn't keep up. The world is built for speed running as well with so many shortcuts that experienced players can utilise, and again, with the randomiser community making it infinitely replayable (not only on its own, but with a crossover with ALTTP!), this game easily makes it onto my list.
Final Fantasy VII My original introduction to JRPGs and a game whose story and mechanics still hold up today even if the graphics don't as much. Obviously a lot of people feel the same way thanks to the Remakes, which while slightly out there have had so much nostalgia to play through them.
Final Fantasy XI The original Final Fantasy MMORPG and my introduction to MMORPGs generally, I put about 10 years into this game and still to this today occasionally reinstall it and see where I was last up to.
Final Fantasy XIV I tried several times to start FFXIV, but never got past the first few dungeons until COVID lockdowns hit, and since then am fully on board. The story, while a slow burn, is so good, and being a live service game means there's always new content coming or changes to learn. But really, the story in FFXIV is easily good enough to qualify as a mainline FF title, and any FF players who haven't tried it yet, should.
Doki Doki Literature Club You have to play this blind. Don't watch a let's play, and avoid any spoilers if you can. It's worth it. But when it's all done, if you're playing on PC, people have written entirely new mods and story for it, and the good ones really know how to make you connect with the characters.
Persona 5 Royal I discovered the Persona series with Golden, and was super excited to play Persona 5 when it released, but Royal is the definitive version that you'll want to play. The story is great, the gameplay is lots of fun, and the combination of JRPG and slice of life makes you feel a lot more connected to the loveable cast.
Factorio Just perfectly tickles that itch for resource management. The factory must grow.
Metal Gear Solid 2 A main memory I have of this game is the first time playing it where I bought out a whole box of those chocolates they sell for fundraising - was supposed to sell them to other people but they were great for late night snacking while I played. The stealth, the tension, the weird everything towards the end, it was a trip from start to finish.
Duke Nukem 3D Duke wasn't my first foray into FPS games (Wolfenstein 3D manages that title). But it holds a special place in my heart as it was the first game I ever played online multiplayer on. But I did it before the internet, so literally had a modem to modem connection running over an IPX network. Realistically, there's been plenty of better FPS games since, both modern and classic, but the irreverent humour, plus the fact I was a teen who probably wasn't supposed to be playing a game with strippers and highly pixilated tits in it, just edges it into my top 10.
Not in order:
Dang. This is almost my list as well, and the ones that are different I can totally see why they could be on someone else's list. I like your taste in games.
Not in any order of value, but in alphabetical order. I couldn’t stick to just 10, sorry. And I’m sure I’m missing some good ones.
…yeah, I’m bad at picking favorites.
Chrono Trigger
Earthbound
Xenogears
Nier: Automata
Vagrant Story
Super Mario World
Hades
Elden Ring
Horizon: Zero Dawn
Final Fantasy XIV
Kind of in order, kinda not. They all deserve 1st place, really, and I'm sure there are many others that could be up there with them that didn't spring to mind as fast.
In no particular order:
I bet our birthdays are pretty close to one another's.
Youngins. Did you never even meet Wirt?
in no particular order:
-Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun Firestorm
-Wolfenstein 3D
-Max Payne
-Railroad Tycoon 2
-Starcraft
-Half-Life
-Fallout 2
-Tropico 3
-Age of Empires II
-Uplink
Yakuza 0
Yakuza Kiwami
Yakuza Kiwami 2
Yakuza 3
Yakuza 4
Yakuza 5
Yakuza 6
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Dragon Quest 11
Nice, I love Yakuza, really very special in the world of gaming! :-)
In no order
Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
Bloodborne
Celeste
Slay the Spire
Monster Hunter: World (+ Iceborne)
Hades
Portal 2
Persona 4: Golden
Advance Wars 2
TES 4: Oblivion
In no particular order:
Honourable mentions:
Okay let's do this. Not in any order:
There are some really good ones that I remember after reading this thread such as Hades, Slay the Spire and more.
I'm just going to drop my number 1, especially because it's in no one's list but somehow CP2077 is mentionned several times..
Then the rest would be:
... I'll leave the remaining 2 to others :)
Depends how you define 'top', but lets go with most (estimated) hours played:
Minecraft. It wont track my hours, but if it did in the back end and told me I had played 10,000 hours of minecraft, I'd believe it. Yes I'm aware that's more than a year of playtime, I mean what I said. Almost been playing for half my life, I doubt I will ever truly stop.
Runescape, both RS3 and OSRS. They started tracking hours played well after I started playing, but given my playtime for both of these is listed in days, it probably deserves being here. You never quit Runescape, you merely take extended breaks.
League of Legends. This probably wouldn't show up if it were a list of favourite games, i don't know why I still play it. Around 2,000 hours at last check. Help me.
Forza Horizon 5. 600 hours. I did a lot of races. 400 hours in the previous title. Anyone still playing 5 know if the game works properly now? I remember the online being a disaster and the majority of every leaderboard being cheated times.
Warframe. This is going out of order due to the extremely short time I got those hours. At 500 hours, the first 200 hours were in 2 weeks. More games need bullet jump.
Counterstrike: Global Offensive. Yeah that's about 2k hours again. This game has ruined most other FPS games for me because bullet travel time is a bitch and I never learned it.
Stardew Valley. I think all top 10 lists deserve this game, 400 hours. Level 10 fishing in the first spring, never sided with Joja.
Skyrim. 360 hours, although at least 20 of those hours were mid-crash. Unplayable without mods.
Trackmania 2020. Excellent game, ton of fun. Wish it wasn't behind the Ubisoft launcher, this game is the only reason I have it. 300 hours. Obviously learned about the game from Wirtual.
Stellaris brings out 10th, 170 hours. I have no idea how to play the game and I think I need about 500 more hours to maybe get the basics down. And then I'll have to learn all the DLC!
This list did not end up being some of the games I expected it to be. I thought Skyrim would be lower, and I thought Beat Saber would've made an appearance, but only 145 hours of that. This list also skipped idle games because that's just cheating. Apparently I only have 10 games on Steam over 100 hours, that's clearly not enough gaming and I need to fix that. Did I write too much? Probably. But I spent a couple minutes looking up the numbers for some of these so I'm not just gonna not post it at this point.
No Order:
Rimworld
Project Zomboid
Deep Rock Galactic
Vintage Story
Fallout New Vegas (+F2)
Civilization 5
Kerbal Space Program
Mass Effect Series
Minecraft
Gothic
I tried to think of games that I keep coming back to, or in the case of Persona and Celeste, ones that stick in my head even years after beating them.
Edit: don't know how this slipped my mind but a kingdom Hearts game should definitely be here. It's my favourite game series, I think I forgot to put it down because I was trying to think of which one I would put down as the best of the series.
-The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
-Chrono Cross
-Dark Souls 3
-Twisted Metal Black
-Final Fantasy IX
-Perfect Dark
-Banjo Kazooie
-Super Mario 64
-Killer Instinct
-Contra
In no particular order:
Day of the Tentacle is one of my first PC gaming memories. My friend's brother had a PC that could play it, and I was in awe. I remember he had to uninstall it to make room for Duke Nukem 3d...
In no particular order:
Tunic, Outer Wilds, Undertale, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Celeste, Hollow Knight, Ori And The Blind Forest/Will of the Wisps, Citizen Sleeper, The Talos Principle
If you force me to choose a top 3 of those:
No particular order. Very much based on personal enjoyment - I recognize that a few of these are very flawed!
Ace Combat 4/5/Zero
Slay the Spire
Elden Ring
Dark Souls 3
Escape From Tarkov
Pokémon Sapphire
DOOM (2016)
PUBG (in its heyday)
(Old School) Runescape
Titanfall 2
In no particular order:
In no order...
And some bonus games to add to the mix, because there are too many amazing games in the world.
EDIT Also
In my playtime order. (I know OP asked best game of all time. But, this list is according to games which I think is best.)
Honourable Mention
And a shout out to Arashi, which was a great classic mac homage to Tempest.
Out of those probably Terraria and Minecraft take up ranks 1 and 2, just because i START playing them again every few years
Probably incomplete list that I may update after a nap.
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(Edit 1: formatting)
A lot of my gaming experience has been on Nintendo consoles, and a lot of this list is going to be viewed through nostalgia goggles with a lot of my first ranking higher than games that might have done the same thing better.
Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt- this is where it all began for me, and I still wish light gun games had become more of a thing
Tetris- timeless classic, everyone knows and loves it, no further explanation needed.
Pokemon red/blue/yellow- my first forray into RPGs
Kotor- first forray into RPGs that actually involved playing a role, the fact that you could be a bad guy was revolutionary to me. I also think this may have been one of the first games that I played completely through, I've always had a bad habit of never finishing a lot of games even if I really loved them. Also one of my first PC games and the first time I needed to install a graphics card in the family PC to play a game.
TES: Oblivion - look, you could pretty much insert any of the elder scrolls or 1st person fallout games into this spot, and quite a few others that arguably do it better, but this was my first real taste of an open world where you could go do (moru-or-less) whatever you wanted, everything felt so alive, and the imperial city still kind of feels to me like one of the most alive and actually functional cities in a video game and not just a level that's dressed up to look like a city.
Portal 2: I don't think there are many games out there that are just this much fun, and everything the first portal did great (which was pretty much everything,) 2 expanded on and made even better.
Octodad: Dadliest Catch- I'm a sucker for short games with a good gimmick and intentionally weird controls.
Saints Row 3- it was stupid, it was fun, I could honestly entertain myself for hours just running around the city, stealing cars, and beating luchadores with a giant dildo for hours and have a blast the entire time.
Super Mario 64- my first experience with 3d gaming, and I'd argue still one of the best 3d platformers out there (wonky cameras and such from that era aside) I like simple, lightheaded games.
Ocarina of time- enough has been said about this game elsewhere on the Internet that I don't feel like I need to say any more.
My favorites:
Context: I'm pushing 40 and didn't play video games between SNES and Switch.
This might be an unpopular list, but I'm ranking games in terms of overall enjoyment.
Elder Scroll series. Skyrim for the modding and eyecandy potential, Oblivion for the madness that is spellcrafting (also Shivering Isles is the best ES DLC), Morrowind for the true alien fantasy.
Thief II is the quintessential first-person sneaker.
Independence War II still has one of the best flight models and a great story.
X3: Terran Conflict is the best first-person strategy game.
Half-Life 1 and 2.
Il-2: Great Battles is the best WWII combat flight sim.
DCS is the best jet combat sim.
Elite: Dangerous is the only space sim with actual 1:1 scale galaxy, including many real-life stars and is the best life-in-space simulator with flight model as good as I-War 2 and decent enough on-foot parts (even though there is some jank and glitches).
Roughly in order, I think:
Honorable mention:
Looking over this, it seems like I'm drawn to games that have either unusually good writing, very long skill curves, or (e.g., #1) both.
UT2004 sneaks in for being the absolute best LAN-party game ever (fight me). I think Link's Awakening is mostly just nostalgia though. 😋
Edit: bumped UT2004 down to "honorable mention" because I somehow forgot the billion hours I've sunk into Satisfactory. Still very curious to see where that game goes story-wise after the 1.0 launch, though.
I'm a pretty casual gamer, so I've pretty much only played the "hits" a few years after they've been out.
These are the ones I remember feeling the most groundbreaking and spending the most time with over the years.
I got a good laugh out of the other post that is all the Yakuza games, because that's how I spent a ton of my Covid work from home time playing them on the cheap. They had the fun of the GTA games, but I never like the main characters were bad people, so Yakuza gave me the games I've wanted through all the GTA years and then some.
Just the ones I know, of course. In the order I fell in love with them:
Darn that’s ten and it only gets me up to two decades ago, when I was ending college.
My ten from after college:
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