Your top 9 games [(-2023 EDITION-)]

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

How the fuck is someone like: New Vegas is a good pick but fuck Thief 2?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Thief games are overrated here. It's not that they aren't good, but they are not as great as the hivemind would have you believe. This is coming from someone who played them when they originally came out.

 

[Axioms]

Top 9 games of all time? I'm not making a grid but here it is, in no particular order:
Dominions 3
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim: Northern Expansion
Civ 3
Grim Dawn
Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion
Guild Wars 1
Warlords Battlecry 3
EvE Online

There's probably other games I could trade in and out like Morrowing for WB3, but this is mostly correct. I might swap Civ 3 out for something but I played it so much as a kid.

 

[Elthosian]

I can't be bothered with this 3x3 horseshit. In no particular order:

Deus Ex
Fallout
Wizardry 7
Grimoire
The Dark Heart of Uukrul
Thief 2
Heretic
Knights of the Chalice
New Vegas

Shit list, butterboy. Fallout, Deus Ex, New Vegas, ok, but everything else, lol.

New Vegas over Thief 2? Suuuuuure.

 

[Ash]

Darkwood perhaps shouldn't be there, maybe, but it's my favorite indie game at this current point in time.
Also Doom should perhaps be there instead of Duke 3D. Fucking impossible to decide. So many games I wanted to list.
Maybe one day I will resurrect my top 100 list.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Fallout 2
WWF No Mercy
Arcanum
Heroes of Might and Magic 2
Heroes of Might and Magic 3
Street Fighter 3: Third Strike
Duke Nukem 3D
Skies of Arcadia/Skies of Arcadia Legends
Dragon’s Dogma/Dark Arisen

Could also be there:

Def Jam: Fight for NY
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
Marvel vs Capcom 2
Capcom vs SNK 2
Dead Rising
Fallout
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Pharaoh/Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile

​

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Thief games are overrated here. It's not that they aren't good, but they are not as great as the hivemind would have you believe. This is coming from someone who played them when they originally came out.

I’m not even debating the Thief games being the greatest games ever. I’m just specifically pointing to the bit where New Vegas is somehow a better pick than Thief 2.

I kind of just assume most people that post here are of an age that they probably played the Thief games as they were coming out. Probably even played the first one before it came out with the PC Gamer demo or whichever magazine it was that had that demo.

 

[ADL]

Emergent gameplay is what makes video games special.

Honorable mentions

Anarchy Online
Arx Fatalis
Asheron's Call
Betrayal at Krondor
Deus Ex/Mankind Divided
Chip's Challenge
Gothic
Guild Wars
Half-Life series
Jedi Knight series
King's Field series
Loco Roco series
Max Payne 1&2
Neverwinter Nights (persistent world modules)
Operation Flashpoint (including ARMA games)
Patapon series
Quake
Rayman series
Starsiege Tribes
Two Towers MUD
Ultima 4/7

 

[Butter]

I can't be bothered with this 3x3 horseshit. In no particular order:

Deus Ex
Fallout
Wizardry 7
Grimoire
The Dark Heart of Uukrul
Thief 2
Heretic
Knights of the Chalice
New Vegas

Shit list, butterboy. Fallout, Deus Ex, New Vegas, ok, but everything else, lol.

I see I'm living in your head rent-free still. I'm sorry Witcher 3 and Breath of the Wild didn't make my list. Maybe in 2024.

 

[HansDampf]

Fine...

Hard to pin down. Ask me again next month, and half of these could change. DeuS ex, however, will always remain firmly planted in the center.

 

[Dr1f7]

Get on my level
View attachment 39246

this is a great list
mario sunshine is probably my favorite mario, love monkey ball, Warioware is one of the most fun games ever made
some close friends of mine have long regarded sonic adventure as one of their fav games, though i've never played it

don't know about the others but i'm sure they're great

 

[luj1]

Heroes 3
Quake
Starcraft
Diablo 2
NwN
Morrowind
Dawn of War
Alpha Centauri
Caesar III

 

[whydoibother]

Get on my level
View attachment 39246

this is a great list
mario sunshine is probably my favorite mario, love monkey ball, Warioware is one of the most fun games ever made
some close friends of mine have long regarded sonic adventure as one of their fav games, though i've never played it

don't know about the others but i'm sure they're great

I made that as a joke, if the games listed are actually good, its entirely a coincidence. I haven't played any of them.

 

[luj1]

No, Heretic is superb. Very nearly put it on mine instead of Doom.

eh

its essentially a switch chaser and Doom reskin

superb music but Hexen is a quantum leap in design

I actually prefer Heretic 2 which is an underrated gem and fun third person action adventure

 

[Dr1f7]

Get on my level
View attachment 39246

this is a great list
mario sunshine is probably my favorite mario, love monkey ball, Warioware is one of the most fun games ever made
some close friends of mine have long regarded sonic adventure as one of their fav games, though i've never played it

don't know about the others but i'm sure they're great

I made that as a joke, if the games listed are actually good, its entirely a coincidence. I haven't played any of them.

damn really? well you should at least try warioware that game's a blast. I don't think it matters which one, they're probably all similar. they're basically collections of a bunch of really short minigames.

 

[Ash]

Emergent gameplay is what makes video games special.

Nope. FUCK NO. It is just one small thing of many that makes video games special.

 

[Beans00]

 

[Tweed]

 

[Ash]

No, Heretic is superb. Very nearly put it on mine instead of Doom.

Genuinely surprised to see this level of Heretic love ITT, especially from a respectable gentleman such as yourself and my boi butters. It's certainly not a bad game and imo way better than the absurd Hexen games, but better than Doom no fucking way. Most notably, the level design while good is not Doom ingenuity-tier. Personally I consider it one of the less notable greats of the 90s FPS. It feels very derivative of Doom and at the same time fails to capture Doom's greatness. It's in my '90s FPS classics.txt' for sure, but near the bottom, even with a number of console FPS placed over it (Turok 1 & 2, Alien Trilogy, Doom 64).

 

[Butter]

No, Heretic is superb. Very nearly put it on mine instead of Doom.

Genuinely surprised to see this level of Heretic love ITT, especially from a respectable gentleman such as yourself and my boi butters. It's certainly not a bad game and imo way better than the absurd Hexen games, but better than Doom no fucking way. Most notably, the level design while good is not Doom ingenuity-tier. Personally I consider it one of the less notable greats of the 90s FPS. It feels very derivative of Doom and at the same time fails to capture Doom's greatness. It's in my '90s FPS classics.txt' for sure, but near the bottom, even with a number of console FPS placed over it (Turok 1 & 2, Alien Trilogy, Doom 64).

Doom absolutely deserves to be higher if it's an All-Time Greatest Games list (similarly I think Thief TDP/Gold deserves to be higher than Thief 2 on such a list). Doom E1 is the tightest set of levels in any FPS (although I don't think any of the subsequent episodes lives up to it). I prefer Heretic's aesthetics, and things like weapons having secondary functions.

 

[Lemming42]

For a lot of us I think the dark fantasy theme just captured our imaginations - Doom's Phobos/Deimos bases and psychedelic hell were cool but something about Heretic's setting felt genuinely eerie and oppressive. Great soundtrack too, I think Heretic's E1M1 music is as good as Doom's (when played on the right soundfont to highlight the guitar). And superb graphics and sprite-work - the Disciples of D'Sparil still freak me out when they show up, just drifting mid-air through long-ruined buildings before suddenly spazzing out in a fit of purple light when they spot you.

The verisimilitude of the world was cool as well. Other than Knee-Deep In The Dead, the levels in Doom aren't really meant to look like anything comprehensible, which is no problem, but Heretic's themed levels and attempts to look like tangible locations meant that the adventure had all kinds of memorable locations - the starting docks and the ruined canal town in E1, the cathedral-castle surrounded by a magma lake but also floes of ice in (I think) E2, the underwater dome with endless tunnels and waterways that comprises all of E3, the titular cesspit ambush in "The Cesspit", etc.

There's all kinds of small cool tricks as well, like the Iron Liches being able to force you into the air and spin you in random directions. Plus the item system which feels fairly well-integrated into the game for what it is. Nothing like spamming Morph Ovum after falling into a pitch-black deathtrap room.

I can just about remember the two big boxes the game came in (before my dad threw them out) - the original with the Gerald Brom artwork, and the Serpent Riders edition that looked like a Tome of Power. Used to just sit and stare at them for ages as a kid.

 

[Machocruz]

HONORABLES:
Dwarf Fortress
Doom 1
Tomb Raider
Strider
System Shock 2

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Darkwood perhaps shouldn't be there, maybe, but it's my favorite indie game at this current point in time.
Also Doom should perhaps be there instead of Duke 3D. Fucking impossible to decide. So many games I wanted to list.
Maybe one day I will resurrect my top 100 list.

Can't have Arx Fatalis but not Ultima Underworld. I like Arx Fatalix, but everything in it, Ultima Underworld didn't just inspire, it did a lot better.

Thief games are overrated here. It's not that they aren't good, but they are not as great as the hivemind would have you believe. This is coming from someone who played them when they originally came out.

I’m not even debating the Thief games being the greatest games ever. I’m just specifically pointing to the bit where New Vegas is somehow a better pick than Thief 2.

Thief games might be better at what they do than New Vegas, but New Vegas is an open world RPG, which puts it much higher than a stealing/sneaking oriented stealth game. There is a reason why stealth games are relatively few in number, sneaking around and stealing stuff is not as fun for most people as fighting, getting better gear, participating in dialogue, exploring, and everything else that a fully fledged RPG offers.

 

[Shuruga]

Another day could have resulted in a very different list, but as I was thinking on this I decided to use my impressions at the time of playing them and overall replayability as defining criteria... I rarely replay RPGs but for these games I either did replay them or just really enjoyed my first pass. NWN is a bit of a special case because most of my time is on community modules rather than the original campaign / extensions, and I'm more sensitive to flaws in some of these games now than when I first played them (e.g., combat in Witcher 3 retroactively took a hit once I started playing Dark Souls), but all that said this is a pretty solid cross section of RPGs I've enjoyed the most over the years.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Darkwood perhaps shouldn't be there, maybe, but it's my favorite indie game at this current point in time.
Also Doom should perhaps be there instead of Duke 3D. Fucking impossible to decide. So many games I wanted to list.
Maybe one day I will resurrect my top 100 list.

Can't have Arx Fatalis but not Ultima Underworld. I like Arx Fatalix, but everything in it, Ultima Underworld didn't just inspire, it did a lot better.

Thief games are overrated here. It's not that they aren't good, but they are not as great as the hivemind would have you believe. This is coming from someone who played them when they originally came out.

I’m not even debating the Thief games being the greatest games ever. I’m just specifically pointing to the bit where New Vegas is somehow a better pick than Thief 2.

Thief games might be better at what they do than New Vegas, but New Vegas is an open world RPG, which puts it much higher than a stealing/sneaking oriented stealth game. There is a reason why stealth games are relatively few in number, sneaking around and stealing stuff is not as fun for most people as fighting, getting better gear, participating in dialogue, exploring, and everything else that a fully fledged RPG offers.

Stealth games on average probably do better than most RPGs, especially when RPGs were still truly RPGs as opposed to action games with skill trees or something.

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the best selling “RPGs” of the 21st century and it’s largely just a stealth game with a few unrelated side activities.