Best video games of all time?

[Rub'Rum]

I've never been an RTS fan (quite the opposite, actually)

Yeah, me neither really... I did play quite a bit of Age of Empires 2 but that was the extent of it. I never was very good anyway.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Frontier (aka Elite2)- Amiga
X Beyond Frontier - PC

Special mention since these are such wonderful games. I remember that one could save money by dumping fuel waste in remote areas to save paying money to have it reprocessed at a station.

 

[CivCube]

Minecraft: My new obsession. With its unique look in landscape and creatures, it's already one of the most iconic games ever.

Civilization 4: Even at launch I could tell how much effort Soren and co. put into it. It's just crammed full of features. Watch their post-mortem!

Mass Effect 2: Some of the best integration of cutscenes and gaming I've seen. A blast to play.

Team Fortress 2: Hilarious, transparently designed, and just fun.

Myst and Riven are arguably one game and continue to fascinate me. The rest of the series ranges from average (Exile) to terrible (End of Ages).

 

[Iranon]

Regarding TES: I don't get the 'Morrowind vs. Oblivion' debate when both are a pale shadow of Daggerfall. Gameplay was always laughably easy to break and they all feel artificial, stilted and empty.
Daggerfall has an excuse - can't handcraft everything given the ginormous world and open-ended nature. The later games are a lot less ambitious and still don't address the flaws adequately.

Regarding open-ended gameplay... does Hardw[a]r deserve a mention? Writing it like a space trading game, then cramming it into a few craters on a moon and doing a reasonably complex economy simulation makes it come alive and feel natural in a way few sandboxes manage.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yeah daggerfall also didn't age well... it was definitely something incredible in its own time but the graphics and many gameplay elements are unbearable for modern gamers. who cares if the world is ginormous when 99% of it is just randomly generated boredom?

 

[EnglishCrusader]

Regarding TES: I don't get the 'Morrowind vs. Oblivion' debate when both are a pale shadow of Daggerfall. Gameplay was always laughably easy to break and they all feel artificial, stilted and empty.

Maybe to you, but that doesn't mean everyone feels that way.

 

[Thormodr]

Happy to see so many votes for Planescape: Torment.

My vote for greatest game of all time would have to be Darklands. A true classic which is now on sale again at GoG. Woot!

Honourable mention to Baldur's Gate and cIV as well as Planescape:Torment.

 

[wabatt]

In order of greatness:

Morrowind
Civ IV
Knights of the Old Republic

and if I had to pick a FPS I'd go with... Half-Life 2

 

[Skwink]

Everything by Valve

 

[illram]

This is tough. I can't really decide on my own criteria.

Doom
Super Street Fighter II
Super Mario 3
Zelda 3 (Link to the Past)
Shadowrun (SNES)
Super Mario Kart
FFVII
Quake 2
SOCOM II
COD4
Fallout 3
Oblivion
Civ 4

Alot of those are personal preference. I think on the above list I could only justify Doom, Mario, Street Fighter and maybe Fallout/Oblivion as objectively significant to the video game world for one reason or another. Maybe Quake I, (not II) since it was one of the first (the first?) truly 3D FPS games. By truly 3D I mean you could have an environment with more than one level with players occupying spaces directly above one another. This was a leap forward after Doom, in which this was impossible, plus with Quake you had a huge leap forward in multiplayer gaming from Doom, which was limited to 4 players for most of its lifespan.

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

Doom is a good pick - with a port that supports mouse look it's surprising how well it plays today. It's very well paced and the different weapons and enemy types make for decent variety in the combat.

Other good ones - Civilization 4, Team Fortress 2, Portal 1, 2, COD4