For me personally, any game in the Super Smash Bros series.

They've always been a go-to when hanging out with friends, in their time.

Melee still has a following. Nobody likes brawl because of tripping (among other things i'm sure), but I learned how to mod brawl and added so many custom stages and character skins. Sm4sh was ok, and Ultimate is so complete.

Yeah it's Nintendo and "it's always moral to pirate Nintendo games" and there's plenty to complain about their online services but I've played smash so much that every time a new game comes out immediately a must-buy.

Civilization III and/or V

Edit: If you have lot's of time available.

As i sadly have not found them here:

-Gothic (all three). One of the first non-us-centric and it showef

• giants:citizen kabuto. Weird genre-mashup that also was funny.

And a ton more I'm too lazy to list.

some recent games I absolutely loved

• Disco Elysium
• Children of Morta
• Viewfinder
• Planet of Lana
• INSIDE
• Limbo
• Chained Echoes
• Detroit: Become Human
• Triangle Strategy
• Tunic
• Prodeus

the binding of isaac and deep rock galactic. best games I've ever played oh and maybe minecraft (I'm 28 and the past 2 weeks got into the mc rabbit hole AGAIN)

So many tedious recommendations when the answer is obviously heaven's vault.

It's dogshit in almost every way. Even moving around the world feels like pouring salt into your eyes. I hate almost every single thing, the protagonist, the pace, the awful vehicle sections to travel. But it's something you should play, or perhaps experience.

It's an archeological translation game and there are multiple moments of "Ok so maybe that actually means font of life not mother goddess, but that would mean this means artificial god which would mean that the extinction event was actually transcendence and holy shit..."

Which kind of games. From an Rpg perspective,

• Alice is missing a silent Rpg, which is played using instant messenging. That one is absolutely crazy, with a lot of potential for bleed

• Blade in the dark, which is basically the latest revolution in Rpg. And led to the FITD games, it kept the yes but partial success from previous generations of PBTA games, use long term actions (aka clock) for everything (same mechanics for opening a lock, seducing the princess or fighting a guard), and has this downtime phase which is more than just spending XP. It also has flashback mechanic letting you jump to the action and plan latter

• Mork Borg, the system is fine but banal. However, the weird aesthetic makes it a must have in a rpg lover collection

Doom 1993/doom 2. Decades of gaming since it came out and STILL nothing has beat the tactile sound of the super shotgun paired with the moans of demons collapsing. Absolutely amazing. though I only have 100+ hours in these 2 games combined they are a must play.

Closest I can think of is the engineers plasma gun in Deep Rock Galactic which is my #2 must play game. Its SO fun and a successful grapple + special powder x2 + grapple + skull crusher to get into a nitra vein when the engie isn't around is so incredibly satisfying. 1700 hours shows I love it so much.

Minecraft. Need I say more? rough estimate as a lot hasn't been tracked but 1500 on switch and 153 days on prismlauncher is around 5,000 hours in this silly block game.

EDIT: didn't expect the variety of games in this thread, very interesting

• Factorio
• Return to obra dinn
• Skyrim
• Chrono Trigger (must pirate because SNES is best)
• Papers please
• Enter the Gungeon
• Cuphead
• Slay the Spire
• Subroutine
• Medieval 2 Total War (bit aged with mods to fix)
• Warcraft 3 and/or StarCraft 2 (for the campaign)

Mass Effect Trilogy (legendary edition).

You can't buy them anymore. They're all got delisted from every store by the publisher.

To give something that most likely has not been mentioned: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. The character banter is the best I've encountered in any video game thus far.

Voices of the Void.

Oh, wait. It's free right now??? Go get it!