What games did Ryan love?

I finally built my own gaming PC for my birthday/Christmas last year. This means I have very few games on steam*. I'd like to flesh it out a bit during this Summer Steam Sale (and sales on other sites like GreenManGaming). And I thought no was the perfect moment to put some of Ryan's favourite games on my radar. I'm going to check out some of the GOTY videos and things but I'm just asking for ideas.

*On Steam I own: Borderands 2, FEZ, Sleeping Dogs, Spec Ops: The Line, Superbrothers: Swords & Sworcery EP, Tomb Raider, Transcripted, The Witcher 2 and Xcom: Enemy Unknown. And on Uplay I own Far Cry 3. (Plus I have loads of games on consoles but they can be ignored for the sake of this - although if there is a game you know he loves which is an exclusive to a console I'd love to hear it too.)

--Edit-- Titles I have bought/will buy since making this post: Bioshock Infinite, Antechamber, Hotline Miami, Saints Row: The Third, Civilisation V...

I know he had a huge love for Civilization 5.

Saints Row The Third

This.

@mcfart said:

Really? I just watched his top 10 for that year again and he did mention it. Huh, for some reason I hadn't remembered that. I nearly bought that at Christmas, if it goes on daily/flash/community/non-steam sale I'll pick it up. Thanks guys.

Same goes for Saints Row. @ll_exile_ll

I'm pretty sure he really loved the Final Fantasy series, as well as all the FIFA games.

And he liked tennis games. Yeah seriously.

Don't forget golf games, especially SimGolf.

What kind of tennis games? More realistic ones (like virtua tennis) or arcadey ones (like mario tennis games)? I owned two Tennis games on the PS2 (and my mum loves tennis - you can't get away from it in the Summer with Wimbeldon being here last week).

Thanks Rorie. I was actually planning on playing the older Final Fantasy games at some point (currently in a playthrough of 8, then I'll do 6,9, 7 and 4). Do you know which specific ones he liked (I might move them up in my rotation)? I was also going to get Chrono Trigger and Persona 4 as they are one of the few big-name JRPG's that I haven't played. As for FIFA, I spend most of my days getting away from football talk (I'm only into it for the World Cup every 4 years)...

Ah yeah, forgot about simgolf. Can't blame him though, that game is a lot of fun.

I think my aunt would get annoyed at me for playing a Golf video game rather than a real game of golf (she is/was a semi-professional golfer)...

@dixavd: Cant remember exactly which games, but there are loads of tennis quick looks with Ryan at the helm. Have a look and see for yourself =)

@rorie: Huh really? I didn't know he was into FF, you know which ones he liked? I've been wanting to play some of the older ones again for a while. I also am going to play a game of Civ 5 at some point and name my leader Ryan Davis, not sure which civilization to choose though, anyone have any ideas?

Streets of Rage 2.

@dixavd:

Saints Row is about to be the next community choice sale on Steam. It will be $5 for the next 8 hours.

Just Cause 2

See what you did Rorie?! You're responsible for this. YOU!

If youre going to play the FF series he loved FFVII the most. Okay maybe I lied.I know recently Ryan mentioned Fez and FTL as games he enjoyed.

Hotline Miami and Assassins Creed 2/brotherhood, xcom, rockband, Max Payne'szsz, alan wake(?), Uncharted 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance.

@kerse: He wasn't into FF. USA was his race of choice in Civ.

Didn't he really like bully? I think I remember him talking about how much he liked it on an old bomb cast.

Warlords ! on the arcade machine.

@rorie said:

I also remember him being pretty into Spiderman: Edge of Time, Super Smash Brothers, PowerGig, and Dante's Inferno. I don't think anything ever topped the FIFA games for him though, that man sure did love him some Soccer.

Next weekend I am going to play Saints Row 3 from the start and stream online maybe even try and set up some kind of donation thing for Ryan's family....

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance

For the original Playstation, he was quite fond of Incredible Crisis and No One Can Stop Mr. Domino.

Also, this thread needs people to use a /s or a #actuallyryanhatedthis tag. I almost corrected somebody because I don't read every post. For the record, my suggestions are accurate to the best of my knowledge.

Beware: Long Responding Chain Ahead! (If this was sent to you as me responding, finding your name/area underneath).

@winsord: @arabes

Damn... I was tricked wasn't I? All in good fun though. As those guys would frequently point out: ultimately, video games are all dumb. Have to laugh off it all. I was thinking that it was odd that Ryan hadn't brought them up in the last 3-4 years that I've been listening to the bombcast. But I did think the same thing about Civ. V so I put it off to me forgetting. Now I checked: Jeff likes FFIV; Ryan, not so much... (Either way though, I'm still going to play FF4-9 soon; and I'm not going to play FIFA).

My problem now is that I don't know which responses are jokes or not... I'd continue to be a little naive though if it means playing some really cool games.

@warlordpayne: Streets of Rage 2 is only a pound; worth a try.

@ll_exile_ll: Yeah, I voted for it just before I left this morning. And it won. Now it's mine, Woo!

@holyhackzack: Just Cause 2's been on my radar for a while (ever since seeing an Easter egg for LOST in it. I'll check out to see if it goes on a big sale (or I'll just get the normal 50% off offer that's until July 22nd).

@localshop: I finished FEZ a couple weeks ago (still chewing on a couple of the less-direct problems. Hopefully I'll figure them out before I just look them all up). And FTL has been mentioned by a couple other people to me as well, not usually my type of thing but if it gets really cheap I'll take the punt.

@poppy_persona: Thanks for mentioning Bully (and reminding me of his love of Red Dead Redemption now that I think about it), I'll check them out.

@thatdutchguy: Since it is an old non-PC game (and I am new to using a PC for gaming at all), do you happen to know any good ways of checking them out that don't require getting an arcade machine (I've heard of emulation before, but every time it's brought up there's a feeling of disdain behind it).

@flameboy84: Definitely do that but possibly wait until they decide what Giantbomb is doing with shirts or whatever; they might prefer it than trying to directly donate. (That reminds me though, I need to re-watch that Saints Row 3 Quick Look).

@fredchuckdave: Is that the old "Baldur's Gate" that got remastered recently? 'Cause I thought that looked interesting but I wasn't sure if I'd like it as well as if the remastered version would be the best version to get (as some people got annoyed with the Doom 4 rerelease, and I didn't want to play a version that someone else would look on and say it was substantially different on some design choices - and arguably worse).

Thanks for the responses guys. And feel free to try and give joke responses - if I get tricked into playing a game that's quite unique or good then I won't mind anyway. (In some ways, I play games because I like seeing the different ways they're made and used, and how they get people to respond).

A little weird and out of left field... I'm totally on board!

Well I DO recall him mentioning that Final Fantasy X was one of the times in which he marathon'd a game.

@dixavd: On a more serious note, Ryan seemed to really love the Assassin's Creed games, and I remember him being pretty fond of Virtua Tennis 4 when it came out (he did also start to use the name Virtua Davis quite a bit after that). YoungFrey was also spot on with his suggestions, though who doesn't love Incredible Crisis?!

I have made a number of purchases based off of Quicklooks of games he was really enthusiastic about. He got me to go from 0 to 60 on games in terms of interest, most notably Civ 5, XCom, Saints Row the 3rd, Sleeping Dogs and Hotline Miami.

@winsord: Yeah I knew he liked Assassin's Creed series (the release of AC2 aligns pretty close to when I started following the site). I haven't played the I played all the big console releases except for AC3 (which I own but haven't got that far in. I've got this weird rhythm with that series of playing it for a bit around release, then leaving it until very close to the release of the next one and binge-playing them. It's become its own quirky tradition). As for Incredible Crisis, @youngfrey linked me to the quick look which I just watched - whoever added in those player-2 tweaking controls was a genius.

@apocalypselater: I bought Xcom as one of my first PC gaming purchases purely on Ryan's recommendation (and it was Vinny's passion that got me to also get Sleeping Dogs at the same time). I bet I'll get the same amount of fun out of Hotline Miami, Civ V and Saints Row. I probably will never finish them but how far I get has been a blast up to this point. I am really bad at finishing games - I've got a list that I have memorized so that when I feel like jumping into something old or just want to finish something then I go back to one of my saves. (I still remember where I am in Sleeping Dogs and Xcom: in Xcom I'm at a bit which requires building a new type of space craft and the difficulty seems to be ramping up so I'm getting to the point where me being a shit strategist while also being a perfectionist is taking its toll; and in sleeping dogs I was on a boat trying to see if I could run over people on a beach...)

I'm pretty sure he loved the shit out of Mario 3. So in terms of a PC thing you're gonna need an emulator on that one.

Ryan's secret love was the Railworks train simulator. I understand that he specifically loved all of the dlc. Every single piece.

@sticky_pennies: Going by one of the GOTY videos, he also really liked Super Mario Galaxy 2 which I own but never finished (something which one of my friends called shameful). I'll probably play that first.

@rebgav: I honestly believe he had a lot of fun playing that game (though I would too if it were with Vinny). The moment when the camera just stopped and the train kept moving through is my favorite quick look moment ever.

Hotline Miami is on sale now and he loved it, I just bought it today so I could play game that he loved.

Check it out.

Pac-Man CE DX.

He didn't like Dante's Inferno. He was terrible at it, from what I recall. It took him several weeks to beat a certain part.

This is the best answer because it's in the true RTD spirit

Cooking Mama, The Gunstringer, Mad Dog McCree, and any and all other American Laser Games — they have respectable ports on iOS now too I believe.

Also he was really found of janky-ass Kinect games and Mrs. Pac-Man.

Oh, and World of Warcraft. He loved that shit.