Top 5 games

[Heathcliff]

I was listening to Desert Island Discs and wanted to start this. I love to talk about games. Your top 5 in no order- be spontaneous.

- Dark Souls

- Mario Galaxy

- Streetfighter 5

- Um Jammer Lammy.

- Labyrinth, on the BBC Micro

 

[Asexy]

Well, first up is Rayman (1995). No surprise to you lol

Then, I'd have Pandemonium (1996), and as follows:

- SuperSponge (2001)

- Super Mario 3D World (2013)..

and either Pac-Man World (1999), or Pac-Man World 3 (2005).

The games I love to play most often have references with my childhood, but I had a blast playing 3D World.

 

[Blah!?]

I never could say no to a good top 5 list. Again, not necessarily in any particular order:

 

- Pokemon Heart Gold & Soul Silver

Generation 2 remains my favorite era of Pokemon, and while I am generally a sucker for nostalgia, the generation 4 remakes have so many enhancements and quality of life improvements that I really prefer them over the originals. I also really wish that more of the games after these would let you have one of your Pokemon follow you around in the overworld. I suppose technical limitations play into it somewhat, but I'm always a little disappointed that none of the others have done this.

- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Virtually everything about this game is perfect to me. Great story, great characters, great atmosphere, great world. I've seen a lot of people say the combat isn't up to par, but honestly I never had a problem with it. It took me a while to play this one because I tried The Witcher 2 before it and I actually couldn't stand the combat in that, so I thought I wouldn't like this one either. Once I finally did try it, however, I was blown away by how invested it got me in its characters and world without even having played the previous games.

- Phantasy Star Online

This is by no means a perfect game, but it holds a lot of sentimental value for me. The story and gameplay aren't great, but it has a great style and nice music, and despite how janky it can be, I just like playing it anyway. Every now and then I hop on a fan-run server to get my nostalgia fix.

- Wolfenstein: The New Order

Quite possibly the single greatest story-driven shooter I've ever played. Who would have thought that Wolfenstein of all things would have evolved into something with a great story at all? Sadly I don't think The New Colossus lived up to the high bar set by this game, but there's nothing stopping me from coming back to this one when I want my nazi killin' fix.

- The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC

If you couldn't tell by the overly long title, yes, this is a JRPG. And I'm just going to come out and say it: This is probably better than any of the Final Fantasy games I've played. I normally don't even like turn-based combat outside of the Pokemon games where it makes sense with rules and whatnot, but this series made it fun again by adding new elements to it that still aren't distracting or overpowering. Plus, these games are probably the only JRPG franchise I've ever seen where you don't have to spend lots of time grinding. Imagine that. The experience you earn scales based on your level, so once you start getting only single digits after a battle, you know you're leveled up enough to handle whatever you have to do next. If you have even a passing interest in JRPGs, you owe it to yourself to play through this series.

[SneezyHolmes]

- Pokemon HeartGold (Just because of the 'Walk with Me' feature lol!)

- Mario Party 5 (One of my first Game Cube games!)

- Watch Dogs (I love the tech heavy aspect of the game.)

- Anything from TellTale (Need I say more? Eagerly waiting for the second installment of TWAU to drop sometime later this year! )

- Any of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games (Playing as the Pokemon was really fun! )

[PuddinPop]

1 hour ago, SneezyHolmes said:

Pokemon HeartGold (Just because of the 'Walk with Me' feature lol!)

 

1 hour ago, Blah!? said:

Generation 2 remains my favorite era of Pokemon, and while I am generally a sucker for nostalgia, the generation 4 remakes have so many enhancements and quality of life improvements that I really prefer them over the originals. I also really wish that more of the games after these would let you have one of your Pokemon follow you around in the overworld.

Literally the reason why Soul Silver will always be my number one game. And damn, SO many people have said they actively dislike HG/SS because of the 'walk with me' feature, and it's one of my favourite things about it. But Gen 2 is definitely my favourite Gen as well, possibly because it is the most nostalgic for me. I spent so many hours on Silver (and Crystal) until the internal timer ran out and I lost my Celebi and life was never the same again.. 

But to list some other of my all-time favourites: 

- Metal Gear Solid, the first one. And not just because Snake catches a cold and sneezes a lot >w> (and also sneezes a single if you stand out in the snow for too long, heheheheh). I just love everything about it; the gameplay, the storyline. What I also loved is the fact that you can do 3 different run-throughs and get a different item each time when you start a new game (either the Stealth, Bandana or Tux). I just adore it, and feel like I'm missing out because I've never played any of the others. 

- Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Legit, it took me until the VERY end of the game when the big reveal happened for me to realise what had been going on. I love it in a game when you get that 'OHHHHHHHHH' moment, and everything just makes sense I had this with this game, and I love it. The puzzles are great, the storyline is fantastic, and I adore games where I genuinely can't wait to get home to play them, and I found that with this one. 

- Crash Bandicoot. The first one. Platform games are my love, and I spent so long completing this to 100%. There is no greater feeling than Crash going 'DA DA DAAAA!' when you get a gem xD Loved this, and still do. 

- And of course, last but not least.. Final Fantasy VII. This one is actually probably joint top for me. EVERYTHING about this game is just.. incredible. A lot of people don't like the turn-based battle system, but I really liked that aspect. It didn't deter me at all, and I found a lot of my youth and my adulthood dedicated to playing and completing this game. What's wonderful is that there is SO MUCH that you can do, almost like side-quests. Like defeating the Weapons, breeding Chocobos, getting a Gold Chocobo so that you can get Knights of the Round materia, the fact that you can CHOOSE whether you have certain members in your party (like Yuffie and Vincent, that you have to do specific things to get them to join you.) And ngl, I love having Cloud dress as a woman so that Don Corneo chooses him to be his bride x'DDD it's that sexy underwear and tiara, man. No one can resist it xD. 

- I also have to throw Undertale in here (this makes it 6, sue me). I love Undertale. When it first came out, I thought it was just a fad-y, overhyped game that the internet was just going batshit over, but here I am, 2 years later, with a tattoo of all the SOULS on my left wrist and having dressed as endgame!Chara for one Halloween xD. I fell in love with every single character, and the gameplay is just masterful. The fact that there are different routes to take, DOZENS of different endings, so many little things that can be done differently each time. And the soundtrack is one of my favourite - if not my absolute favourite - game soundtracks of all time (yes, even better than Cosmo Canyon!) Toby Fox is a genius, and Undertale will forever have a special place in my heart. 

[SneezyHolmes]

47 minutes ago, PuddinPop said:

- Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Legit, it took me until the VERY end of the game when the big reveal happened for me to realise what had been going on. I love it in a game when you get that 'OHHHHHHHHH' moment, and everything just makes sense I had this with this game, and I love it. The puzzles are great, the storyline is fantastic, and I adore games where I genuinely can't wait to get home to play them, and I found that with this one. 

OMG YES THIS GAME WAS THE ABSOLUTE BOMB! Have you played The Unwound Future from this series? It's even better with more challenging puzzles!  But yes, I will never understand the hate Walk with Me got. I mean, to me it's more immersive if I can actively talk with and play with my pokemon! But there is rumors they're bringing it back in the next game which will sadly be only on the Switch.  

[murphy dee]

In absolutely no order:

• Journey
• Dishonored
• Mass Effect 2
• King's Quest 6
• Myst 4

[Red Ring of Death]

Ah, video games! At last, something I know more than negative three things about -clasps hands together- In no particular order, of course but jeez, was it hard to limit it to just five when about ninety four just flitted through my mind.
 

• Uncharted: A Thief's End - I was gonna cheat and put the Uncharted series as a whole in a spot but I decided to put Uncharted 4 specifically because it came to me at a crucial time in my life. The characters are great - and I might be biased but I see a lot of myself in  one of 'em and a lot of my brother in another one, the game is friggin' beautiful, the music's fantastic in its own right. I can play the multiplayer with a few friends and have a blast. I'm always immersed when I play that game.
   
• Red Dead Redemption - Speaking of immersive, one of my guilty pleasures is cowboys and the whole western setting and Red Dead Redemption's atmosphere is this perfect blend of dead and lively, solitary but to the point where when you're surrounded by people, you wish you were back on the road on the horse you broke yourself to sleep under the stars. There are so many interesting characters and John is this great deadpan, polite but very capable badass and he's fun to suffer through the shenanigans of these weird characters with. Red Dead Redemption was the first Rockstar game I played and I don't regret it; it was the first time in a long time where I spent hours meandering the sprawling desert expanse with no destination in mind but enjoying the ride.
   
• Batman: Arkham Knight - No surprises here, but I love Batman. I love him from the tips of his cute little pointy ears to his big, stompy boots. The Arkham series is the best superhero game series I've ever played to this day and I was tempted to put Arkham City on here but ultimately, Knight won out because of... well, the Arkham Knight. Ain't gonna spoil anything here but I'm a sucker for that sorta stuff, for those of you that catch my drift -wink wink- No, it wasn't perfect and it sorta mishandled some of the more interesting characters (-cough cough- Hush and Deathstroke -cough hack- Scarecrow -cough-) but it included others that were weird and creepy and cool and the environment of the game is this oppressive, giant, rusted hypodermic needle gutter of a city with a blanket of smog and rain-swelled dark clouds eternally looming over it. And again, I'm probably biased but my batmobile was covered in splattered, neon green question marks and that's the coolest shit.
   
• Tales From the Borderlands - Loosely borrowing from what Holmes had said, I also love Telltale Games' games with my two ultimate champions being The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands. While I do love Borderlands as a series (as long as I separate it from some of the stupid crap the writers have said and the general consensus that fandoms are cesspools where wounds fester and the water's littered with debris from various ship wars), Tales had the most consistency in terms of sharp writing and the amount of story with, again, very good characters and an interestingly condensed take on the areas of Pandora and Helios. I liked how it kept the story from the original series and ran with it, tying up a couple loose ends (though uuuugh that cliffhanger ending. Not unlike WOLF AMONG US -clears throat obnoxiously) and answering some questions that had been lingering in the mind of many a fan. Also, like with every Telltale game, the music is great.
   
• Bioshock - What's this? Not Bioshock Infinite, the one with Troy Baker? NOPE, it's the good ol' original with its depressing, creepy atmosphere, a terrifying feeling that something is very wrong before you even have control over the player character, a brilliant reason to keep the entire game trapped in a sub-aquatic, ruined utopia where the abandoned halls aren't quite as abandoned as they might suggest, and an air of dark mystery. I love the story, the setting is one of my favourite in any media ever, and it was one of the first games where I was actually scared out of my wits but I just HAD to keep going because I HAD to find out what happened and what was gonna happen next.
   

I definitely thought of more as I was typing this out (and I realise the more I type, the less I sound like I'm giving my feelings and more like I'm trying to tell the games to other people haaah) BUT those are just a handful of the many games that I love.

[PuddinPop]

18 hours ago, SneezyHolmes said:

Have you played The Unwound Future from this series? It's even better with more challenging puzzles!

Yes I have! Though I had to Google it because it's called The Lost Future here in the UK I don't remember it as well as I do The Curious Village, but I do still have it and may have to actually play it through now. You have inspired me

Also, fun fact: did you know some of the Layton games are called different things in the UK than they are in the US? Not all of the puzzles are the same either. I was fascinated when I discovered that xD

18 hours ago, SneezyHolmes said:

But there is rumors they're bringing it back in the next game which will sadly be only on the Switch.  

Aw man, whaaat. That is a huge bummer. I very much doubt that I will purposely buy a Switch just so that I can play the new Pokémon.. though I did buy a 3DS solely for The Miracle Mask, so who knows

[SneezyHolmes]

7 hours ago, PuddinPop said:

Yes I have! Though I had to Google it because it's called The Lost Future here in the UK I don't remember it as well as I do The Curious Village, but I do still have it and may have to actually play it through now. You have inspired me

Also, fun fact: did you know some of the Layton games are called different things in the UK than they are in the US? Not all of the puzzles are the same either. I was fascinated when I discovered that xD

Aw man, whaaat. That is a huge bummer. I very much doubt that I will purposely buy a Switch just so that I can play the new Pokémon.. though I did buy a 3DS solely for The Miracle Mask, so who knows

Whoa, really? I didn't know that about the Layton games!  I know that's sometimes the case for the Pokemon games though but I think that's mostly a Japan/US difference! And I bought a 3DS solely to play Sun and Moon so maaaaybe if the Switch is cheap enough this Black Friday I'll look into it!  I'm such a nostalgic sucker for Pokemon that I'm not sure I'll ever stop playing them regardless of the console..but final point I'm really hoping they do bring back the interaction and it's not just rumors.

I mean, a lot of the pokemon do have 3D models/walking and playing animations hidden in the Sun/Moon coding so unless they're trashing all that work completely then it's probably a safe bet.  

[Enkidom]

In no particular order:

Horizon - Zero Dawn

The Last of Us

Fallout 2

Red Dead Redemption

Knight Tyme (1980s ZX Spectrum game, yes I am that old...lol)

[Guest]

1- Ace Attorney.

2- Professor Layton.

3- Danganronpa (Or Dangan Ronpa).

4- Persona 5.

5- Mystic Messenger.

 I love logic and puzzles games in general, with little exceptions.

[Heathcliff]

Thanks all for your posts- I'm so glad there was King's Quest 6 mentioned, an interesting game