I feel like my “all-time favorite” changes depending on my mood, but if I had to pick just one, I’d probably go with The Witcher 3. That game just hit all the right notes—amazing story, incredible world-building, and so much stuff to do without feeling like pointless filler. Plus, the expansions were just as good, if not better than the base game.
What about you? Are you more into RPGs, shooters, or something else entirely?
I call it a tie between The Last of Us and Uncharted 2. These are two of the most fun games I’ve ever played for totally different reasons.
Uncharted 2 was a lot of a great adventure, and loads of fun with great characters, while The Last of Us games were extremely emotional and I was totally invested in the characters and story.
It’s easily The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
It has everything I could ask for in a game: Sword fighting. Magic. Secrets. Dungeon crawling. An alternate dimension. Side quests. Different tools and items. There’s enough content that it feels fulfilling to complete it. Peak art. Peak music. NPCs don’t talk too much, and there are just enough of them to make the world feel alive. Bosses.
Sometimes Rimworld, sometimes CP2077 and sometimes BG3
Total War: Warhammer 3. I play it more or less exclusively with a buddy in multiplayer. Been playing since part 1 came out. I love how the addition of magic and flying creatures changed the Total War formula up, the immense size of the map, the mixture of races.
Rimworld with a couple of hundert mods is still at the top, although I tend to let it rest for some months before I pick it up again.
Baldurs Gate 3 and Divinity Original Sin 2 are my favourite RPG games.
Used to play Skyrim with a bassilion mods a LOT and love it for the hours of enjoyment, but after so many years I have possibility played enoth of it… But who knows, might feel the itch and spend 48 hours trying to get every mod to run just to stop playing after one hour again at some point.
Loved the Mass Effect Triology. Only did one playtrough, that was intens and great.
Binding of Isaac is still my go to for a quick 30 minutes gaming session when I feel like it. I realy suck at it too, so after 12 years there’s still a lot left to do.
My “nostalgia favorites” will always be Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and Sonic 2 (Genesis version). Sonic 2 is just so fun to go back and play any time I want a quick retro sides rolling platformer fix, and I’ve played through it more times than I can count. OoT was the first game I played that showed me what games could be through a combination of story/cutscenes and gameplay, as someone who was never able to get my hands on an SNES to play the epic JRPGs of the console growing up (I loved my Genesis, but let’s be real, those kinds of games on Sega consoles didn’t really come until later).
Nowadays Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have eclipsed OoT for me, and for other more modern games another standout fave is Fire Emblem Three Houses, due in large part to its story and setting having everything I look for in a game, and its characters actually being more fleshed out and developed than the one-note units handed to you in many other games in the franchise. Engage has more… Engaging gameplay (sorry not sorry for the pun) but the story and characters hold it back quite a bit for me. Gameplay-wise, my favorite strategy RPG actually has to be Triangle Strategy, in that it has quite creative maps and every unit is designed with the potential to be useful depending on how you approach your own strategy, but I like the story/characters of Three Houses at least a bit more, and I tend to value story more in general in games. I’m also a big fan of the Ace Attorney franchise for the overarching story, characters and writing that it’s built up through its history. Phoenix, Maya, Edgeworth, Apollo and friends are all among some of my favorite characters in gaming, and I’m glad I decided long ago to give that quirky-seeming series a try. AA7 when, Capcom?
Shadow of the Colossus was barely even a game, it was art. I don’t think I even played it for more than 20 hours total but just a simple masterpiece.
Planetside 2 as it was many years ago. I’ll be forever bitter how they ruined it.
If I look at recorded playtime then its teamfortress 2 which wins just by 0.1h over rimworld and I havent really played tf2 for over 10 years.
I like many types of games. My favorites are probably Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Super Metroid, and Super Mario World.
All time favorite game is so hard to narrow down. I’d traditionally always say Mario 3 and I stand behind that but there are so many great games that stand beside it. Donkey Kong Country, Half Life, San Andreas, red dead redemption 1 and 2.
I think if I was trapped on a desert island, I’d be fine with any of these as my only game
Minecraft
There are so many things you can do in the game, especially using mods
pronably rock band 3 i played it non stop until rock band 4 came out
and then theres skyrim which i cannot stop replaying every year
I don’t think there was a single party I attended in high school where Rock Band or Guitar Hero wasn’t present. Such a great party game for players and spectators alike. The younger generations are really missing out.
All time faves, it’s a toss up between Fallout: New Vegas and RDR2.
Those two are the ones I still enjoy restarting new games in, and still enjoy playing, despite the cumulative hours logged over the years.
Very special mention to Skyrim though, obviously. I think I’ve logged more hours in Skyrim than the two above, potentially combined, but because I played that so much, I no longer have the desire to play it again whereas when I’m stressed at work, I often find myself daydreaming about riding my good boah through fields of lush grass and fishing in my lil boat.
And I would never have developed the love of gaming I have today if it wasn’t for Oblivion, of all games - so for nostalgia, that gets a mention too.
Baldur’s Gate 2. There’s no game I’ve played through more often. BG3 is a very fun successor, but Larian’s writing can’t hold a candle to classic Bioware.
I honestly wish Larian had just left the IP alone and done a standalone D&D game. There is absolutely no narrative reason for any of the tie-ins and callbacks, it was literally just a case of wanting the brand recognition for better marketing and then shoehorning in some old fan favourites and calling it a day. Seeing Sarevok and Viconia as they were in BG3 just makes me sad.
Gunz: The Duel was my first competitive online game and it’ll always have a soft spot in my heart.
It is crazy to me that Diablo 2 was not mentioned, yet. Second place: Modded Minecraft.