Export thread

It looks like last time we had a thread about this was back in 2009. What game do you consider to be the greatest video game of all time (OF ALL TIME!), and why?

This is for what you, personally, believe to be the best, not what had the greatest impact on subsequent games or sold the most units or a countdown list or anything like that. Just your personal #1.

I've had so many "greatest games ever" that I enjoyed each of, it would be hard to choose any one over the others. But if I were forced at gun point to say what my favorite game ever was, Final Fantasy VII would probably come out of my mouth. Just from a personal experience standpoint, as a kid who grew up with a Playstation it was the first game in my memory to really absorb me into an epic quest to save the world. No other game can ever capture those memories and that massive epicness like the first experience.

Other honorable mentions with no particular order (let's just say they're all tied for #2):
Pokemon Red/Blue (Got a gameboy and Red for my 9th birthday. First game that was truly, solely "mine" that I didn't have to share)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Chrono Trigger
Spyro the Dragon (great memories of that little purple dragon while Insomniac still controlled it)
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy XI (As hated as it is, I think it would be a lie if I didn't include it. I lost nearly 4 months of total waking hours of my life to it.)
Most other SNES Final Fantasy were great as well, but I didn't experience them until I was much older, so they don't ring the same nostalgia chord for me.

I grew up when the arcade was king. The console wars were between the Atari 2600 and the Mattel Intellivision. But there was one game that was able to keep it's look and feel intact in the transition between the two.

SPACE INVADERS

Slurped down quarters like it had a direct line to the bank. At home you played as long as you had the stamina. It wasn't that you rolled the scoreboard, but *how many times* you rolled it in one sitting. It was a point of pride between myself, my sister, and my dad as to who held the video game title that week.

I would figure that my favorite game is the one I had the most fun playing, that would be Super Mario Kart. The first one on SNES, before they introduced tracks so large that if you fell behind, you could never catch up, not to mention the evil that was snaking. A close second would be Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

The game I keep going back to, no matter what else I play, is Dwarf Fortress. Like I'll be playing some Arkham Asylum, or TF2, or Mass Effect, or Fallout, but eventually I'll always fire up Dwarf Fortress again.

I can't make a case for Dwarf Fortress being perfect. It's got flaws, lots of them, and it's nowhere near being a finished product yet. But there's something so damn addictive about building stuff with a bunch of manic depressive alcoholic dwarves.

Picking just one is pretty hard, but I think I'm staying with my choice from back then. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.

Straight tie between:

Xenogears
and
Final Fantasy Tactics

I'm a sucker for an epic story that just grows and grows, while having truly memorable characters and moments that will never leave my thoughts. The gameplay was solid on both but nothing revolutionary. It didn't matter though, because I'll never forget when we learned the connection between Wiseman-Fei-ID-Elly or watching Delita's ambition come to fruition... then what happens afterward.

There are many other games that would get honorable mentions from me, but those two stand shoulders above them all. If I was -forced- to pick between them I'd give Xenogears a -slight- edge for being just a bit grander on the scale.

Hands down. Super Mario 64.

Personally? Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father.

Though I should save everyone some time and note that this is just going to turn into another discussion/argument over Final Fantasy games, like every other "best video games" thread turns into.

ThatNickGuy said:

Personally? Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father.

Though I should save everyone some time and note that this is just going to turn into another discussion/argument over Final Fantasy games, like every other "best video games" thread turns into.

Click to expand...

I've never played a Final Fantasy game, never had the desire to, and can't see me having any inclination to in the future.

I'm completely indifferent to the whole FF franchise.

DarkAudit said:

I've never played a Final Fantasy game, never had the desire to, and can't see me having any inclination to in the future.

I'm completely indifferent to the whole FF franchise.

Click to expand...

A lot of people are anything but indifferent to Final Fantasy though. I mean, there are parts of the Internet where people will crucify you if you say you liked FF8.

(I know from personal experience, and have the stigmata to prove it)

The only game that sucked me in like Skyrim were the Ultima Underworld games... and even if you discount the difference in graphics, Skyrim is still better. I know everybody's expecting everybody to bust out with 8-bit-or-earlier "Tron light cycles was the bomb, yo" posts, but in my mind the current apex of the computerized gaming world is Skyrim, going back as far as you care to look. And it's not like I'm some tween who's never played anything but current gen. I remember playing the original Bard's Tale and staying up all night playing Civ 1 like the rest of you fogies. And yes, Skyrim has its warts, but the open endedness, the immersion, the cinematic quality without being linear, the size of the world, the modding capabilities, and let's not discount the cultural impact.

Super Mario 64 isn't a video game, it's THE video game.

Baldur's Gate 2 + mods

GasBandit said:

and let's not discount the cultural impact.

Click to expand...

David said:

This is for what you, personally, believe to be the best, not what had the greatest impact on subsequent games or sold the most units or a countdown list or anything like that. Just your personal #1.

Click to expand...

I agree with ThatNickGuy. Superman 64 is the greatest.

Allen who is Quiet said:

I agree with ThatNickGuy. Superman 64 is the greatest.

Click to expand...

Now wait just a damn minute here!

Deus Ex. Hands down.

Morrowind comes a close second. I never played Daggerfall until recently, and I'm super pissed at that now, because it would have blown my 11 year old mind. But I didn't, so Deus Ex did that.

As always, my answer now and forever will be Star Control 2.



Or if you prefer, the amazingly early CD-Rom CG 3DO intro.

Probably Masters of Orion II: Battle at Antares.
No other game has gotten the good ol' double-click for longer than MoO2.

--Patrick

Gilgamesh said:

Click to expand...

It's not exactly like that. What I was saying was Skyrim was so very good, so engrossing, so memetic, that it dominated the cultural conscience of the internet for months after its release. Arrow to the Knee jokes. Fus ro dah videos. These weren't top 10 lists, and the fact that it is the new measuring stick by which all future 1st person RPGs will undoubtedly be judged is a separate issue altogether.

GasBandit said:

It's not exactly like that. What I was saying was Skyrim was so very good, so engrossing, so memetic, that it dominated the cultural conscience of the internet for months after its release. Arrow to the Knee jokes. Fus ro dah videos. These weren't top 10 lists, and the fact that it is the new measuring stick by which all future 1st person RPGs will undoubtedly be judged is a separate issue altogether.

Click to expand...

Hm, that's all well and good but that's not what I was referring to.

David said:

What game do you consider to be the greatest video game of all time (OF ALL TIME!), and why?

This is for what you, personally, believe to be the best, not what had the greatest impact on subsequent games or sold the most units or a countdown list or anything like that. Just your personal #1.

Click to expand...

Gilgamesh said:

Hm, that's all well and good but that's not what I was referring to.

Click to expand...

GasBandit said:

...is a separate issue altogether.

Click to expand...

Meaning that was not what my post was referring to by impact. I meant on people, not on subsequent games.

Yes that's all dandy but you're still missing the point.

It's about personal reasons and personal favorites. You listed some but then went off on why it was a general populace favorite.

Gilgamesh said:

Yes that's all dandy but you're still missing the point.

It's about personal reasons and personal favorites. You listed some but then went off on why it was a general populace favorite.

Click to expand...

Cart before horse. I said it was so great that everybody liked it, not it was so great BECAUSE everybody liked it. But we're just arguing semantics now.

No, we're arguing the entire point of the original post. Which was, tell the kids why a game is your own personal favorite, despite what it might have meant to anyone else. Pretty simple concept.

I don't know if it's the greatest but I have been playing Team Fortress in one form or another since the original Quake Mod, that's let see:

Quake TF
Quake MegaTF
TF Classic
Q3 Fortress
ET Fortress
and last but not least
Team Fortress 2

I loved it in all it's incarnations so that's my vote.

Gilgamesh said:

No, we're arguing the entire point of the original post. Which was, tell the kids why a game is your own personal favorite, despite what it might have meant to anyone else. Pretty simple concept.

Click to expand...

And I can't have it be my personal favorite because, in part, it also started a bunch of memes?

If that's the case, Gilgamesh's favorite Xenogears wouldn't count for being one of the most egregious examples of the fucking God awful current meme of releasing an utterly unfinished game.

Ocarina of Time is the one game I have the fondest memories of.

Honourable Mentions:
Doom - I remember about a week or 2 before Doom 3 came out, I reinstalled this while I was waiting. After Doom 3 came out I played it for about 2 hours - then went right back to the original.
Blues Brothers - My favourite game for the first system I ever owned (Commodore 64).
Tetris - Do I even need to justify this?
Illusion of Time (Gaia) - Probably the game that cemented my love affair with RPG's.
Skyrim - Been the "best game right now" for the better part of a year.
Solitaire - Hey, I've played this on a semi-consistent basis for about 15 years now, and so have most of you.

Fucking posts that ask for one thing in the thread title and another in the thread post.

Link's Awakening. Holds on both counts favorite and greatest.

If Gas does want to bring up a game's overall significance as part of his reason for naming it, who's to say he's wrong? My guidelines were just that, guidelines, not hard thread rules.

-shrug-
I was nitpicking. I blame the nitpicky mood I was in at work due to my job requiring nitpicking. Apologies all around.

Did you disagree that Xenogears was released unfinished? The entire second disc is one mash of unfinished content.

So I have Ogre Battle as my all time favorite, but now I feel like making a list for the rest.
(spoiler for length)

You like generally excellent games.

Man, this is hard. I was reading over the games other people mentioned and I kept saying "No wait, THAT'S my favorite game".

I'm going with Q3 Arena though, and all it's glorious mods. Haven't played it for years, but it's probably the best game ever made.

I loved playing Xenogears ... once. Never again.

I feel it's one of those games where the best part was the music. I've listened to the score a million times and still do.

I honestly wonder why Square Enix hasn't taken the original game, added in the missing content (which would be faster and cheaper than remaking the entire thing), and just re-released it as Xenogears Complete. Mega Man 9 and 10 proved that people will be retro themed games, even original ones. Why not take it to the next level?

I don't think Xenogears is that popular anymore. Probably a good chunk of the people who played Xenosaga never even played Xenogears. And honestly, it's not that great of a game; it's just one of those things an RPG fan should experience, if only for the breathtaking span/scale of the story. You just have no idea how BIG things are going to get when you start out.

Perhaps, but it would be an minimal investment and Square hasn't exactly been knocking them out of the park lately.

SquareEnix should make more games like DeusEx:HR

For me, my all time favourites include:

Chrono Trigger
The NES and SNES Super Mario games
The original Zelda
Mario Kart Wii - I spent a scary amount of time playing this!
FF 7 & 8

Honourable mentions include Skyrim, Mass Effect and the Civ games (except 5)

My faves then, being games I can play over and over and over:

Shadow of the Colossus
Final Fantasy Tactics
Chrono Trigger
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Resident Evil 4

We aren't doing lists here! Lists are for wussies. You gotta pick ONE!*


*or not, who gives a fuck

Too much pressure