When Did Your Favorite Series Become Your Favorite?

Metroid became my favorite series after playing through Metroid Prime. Before then, I rarely payed attention to it, and my favorite game was changeable. I suppose it was around the time I got through a couple Alien movies, and I noticed similarities in the vibes. Metroid is partially inspired by Alien. Either way, I ended up loving it so much that I've played through, and beaten, every game except Metroid 2.

I know that many fans were disappointed in the trailer for Federation Force, but it's Retro and Metroid all over again, so I won't complain. It's about the Federation and explores new territory in the franchise, so I'm cool with it.

F-Zero was a no brainer. Racing, future, pretty much it. I grew up watching the show as a kid, and I ended up finding two F-Zero games at a game shop. I bought the GP Legend one since that was the TV show. I guess I ended up thinking of how hyped I was to find that F-Zero had a spot in Smash (I had recently gained a Gamecube by mistake and a large amount of games, including Melee, and was hyped to find that F-Zero was that essential to Nintendo).

Golden Sun is slowly becoming a favorite. At first, it just seemed like Final Fantasy with genies, but I ended up loving the music and the genie system so it's really becoming a favorite.

But one of my first favorite series was Sonic by far. Even though I got it late, I acquired a Genesis as a kid and I played with my grandmother who ran through the levels while I caught the emeralds for her. Also, Sonic 2 is one of the greatest games ever made, so I played it a lot. Twice as much as I played my other two favoroties: Ren & Stimpy and The Pagemaster.

Then we have Tony Hawk and SSX. I pretty much like them for the same reasons: skating, racing, time attacks, collectables, soundtrack. I've always been good at skating games. Heck, I would beat my sis at them and she was better at just about every other game than me.

I found the Legacy of Kain series when I played the first Soul Reaver. For me it was love at first sight from then on. Same goes for Devil May Cry. Metal Gear on the other hand, I loved from afar, only actually playing them in the HD collection but I'd watched other people play them for about a decade before that.

The Witcher since The Witcher. This game spoke to me, pushed the right buttons, knew what I wanted from game before I even knew.

Splinter cell since the first one. Same sentence can be applied here to a lesser degree.

I played the NES Zelda games at friends houses, but never really liked them. I also tried playing A Link to the Past at a friend's house, but a few hours visit is not the best setting to get into these games. I started subscribing to Nintendo Power in '97 as was intrigued by how Zelda games would constantly top the "Power Charts" for all platforms. Despite not having a great love for the series prior to the release of Ocarina of Time I was fully sold on the hype and picked it up at release. I had never played anything like it and i became a high water mark experience. Soon after I played Link's Awakening DX and fell in love with 2D Zelda as well. Majora's Mask and Windwaker proved to me this series was best in video games.

The first time I went over to my best friend's house and he showed me a game that he had gotten for Christmas the previous day. We put Metal Gear Solid in his Playstation, fired it up, and I never looked back.

First time I played Dark Souls. I had played and loved Demon Souls (thank you Vinny) - so I had a grasp of the broad strokes mechanics of the game. I was thus able to focus on the world and gameplay and was immediately immersed.

Well I played Mario, Zelda and Final Fantasy in my formative years, so that's when and probably also why they became my favorites.

Crusader Kings became my favourite series when CK2 came out. I did play the original a lot, but it was very rough around the edges, prone to crashing, so I ended up spending more time with Hearts of Iron 2 & Europa Universalis 3 as far as strategy gaming went. But CK2 took a really great idea and made a great game out of it. Logged many, many hours in it, bought all of the important DLC except the latest (no cosmetic stuff), and EU4 doesn't really get a look in, despite it being a great game in its own right.

Though I'd like to see Paradox take what they've learnt from CK2 & go back to the Roman Republic, but doing it properly, like having 2 consuls, and all these things (Europa Universalis Rome is a pretty flawed game and less fun than the original CK)

When I literally had issues being able to sleep, because I was too excited for the release of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. If it didn't deliver, I would've been pretty upset. Good thing it delivered. That was probably when I realized I liked MH more than anything else.

Halo since it was out during alot of major events in my life.

Halo came out when i moved from England to America, building friendships while playing Halo MP and playing the Co-op with my brother are great memories.

Halo 2 came out when i moved across states, playing Halo 2 on XBL with my old friends after school, while still making new friends at my new High School was really helpful.

Halo 3 came out during college and almost every single person on my floor bought it. God I played that game co-op with so many random people, setting up floor vs floor matches, so many great memories.

don't think any game series will ever come close to Halo for me, actually i know it won't.

It was upon reading a preview in a magazine. The pictures along with what was written ignited my imagination like nothing I'd experienced before, I had constructed the game in my mind long before I ever played it. Then it came out, and while it was different than the game I had envisaged, it was still something very special that ultimately became the most significant game I've probably ever played. There exists a before Metal Gear Solid and an after for me, the before being me as a normal 12 year old kid, the after being a committed and lifelong advocate for gaming as a medium.

With that said, I do not consider any Metal Gear to be either the best game ever made or even my favorite game, and for the most part I don't even think they play very well compared to other games. I've also only played them when they came out and never gone back, and have nowhere near a complete understanding of the plot of the entire series. I can't even explain why it's such an important series to me, it's like looking at a painting and not knowing why it appeals to you, it just does. Speaking of which, I have the same intangible feeling towards Shinkawa's art as I do towards Metal Gear as a whole. It's all just so very cool, and for me 'cool' is a really important factor.

Fallout with Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls with Morrowind. I really liked Fallout 1 and 2, but I think Fallout 3 blew everything else in the series away (up to that point - I like NV more). Morrowind was my first ES game and I spent a lot of very bleary mornings in college thinking about it and caffeine. It was a birthday gift from my folks, and I still remember laughing about how I could steal everything that wasn't nailed down while they shrugged their shoulders and gave me the usual, "Huh, well, cool."

There were many times for me through my life as a gamer.

Street fighter 2 came out and that series showed me that gameplay can be refined to a fine point allowing truly competitive gameplay.

A Link to the Past showed this young impressionable mind that the Zelda series was the embodiment of great game design. Too bad it has become just a little stale. Can't wait for the new open world one.

Playing Metal Gear Solid was like playing many a teenage fantasy of mine. I could not believe how well it combined a movie like experience with gameplay that felt so like role playing. Using the codec to communicate was a brilliant move that let you get hints if you were stuck, fleshed out the story and characters, and let you save. The cherry on top was Kojima's attention to detail. Seeing the guards breath as well as your own added nothing of gameplay value in the first MGS. Being able to shoot bags of flour in the second only to have them fill the room with puffs of flour added nothing. Walking through the flour spilled left footprints was of little consequence. Man, did that attention to detail suck me in that much more though.

GTA 3. I love GTA so much. Single player unapologetic gangster movies. For all the haters out there the genre it created is best described as a sandbox. A sandbox connotes the limitless imagination of a child. It is a great feeling having the weird juxtaposition of ending a Poe faced mission you have struggled with, just to grab your car and drive it into the ocean. Or to start a cab mission, drive to a secluded place, take a selfie with the passenger still in the car, then just walk away. Ah, chaos.

Souls series. I, like a lot of other gamers, have come to expect detailed tutorials. I wanted to be able to beat every game I start. I began to expect increased difficulty to mean less health or enemies having better armor. Maybe they are just better at head shots? The Souls series reminded me that sharp gameplay and good level design are enough without all the hand holding. That death in videogames used to be a teaching tool. That the best feelings of accomplishment are the ones you earn.

This might not be my number one favorite series of all time forever, but here was my introduction to Persona.

I played Persona 3 FES in September/October 2008. I played Persona 4 in December 2008. I finished my new game plus of P4 around February 2009.

That was kind of a magic period in my gaming history and together it was about 240 hours of gaming in roughly 4 months. So yeah, pretty awesome introduction.

My love for the Fallout series began sometime in mid 2003. I had a friend I'd talk to regularly when I was a teen and was on chat rooms who would talk up Fallout a bunch. I've been obsessed with post apocalyptic stuff since my dad sat me down as a eight year old and watch Road Warrior. My friend told me you could get leather armor to make yourself look like Max (it didn't take much to convince 13 year old me to part with his money it seems) and ordered a a duel pack of Fallout 1 and 2 on ebay the next day. My laptop at the time had some issues running the games, mainly the audio not being quite "right" other then that it ran okay and I played the hell out of them.

Fallout games have been a day one purchases for me since then, I've played an unhealthy amount of 3 and New Vegas since then too. Despite having some issues with Fallout 3 compared to the other games in terms of the writing being significantly weaker compared to the others, my deep seated festering annoyance of the Broken Steel story retcon, never being completely on board with the Enclave being in 3, and the tone not being quite as good as the older games or New Vegas. Even with those bugabears I still put a lot of time into Fallout 3, and will pull tons of all nighters on Fallout 4 I'm sure.

The Resident Evil series also became a favorite when I would watch my brother play RE2 on his PlayStation as a kid. I remember the boarded up RPD hallway that had zombie hands reach through as you ran past them scaring the ever loving crap outta me. I would sneak into my brothers room and play as much of it as I could when he was away, I was a Nintendo kid growing up and only switched consoles when the PS2 came out, so I missed out on a lot of PS1 classics, I made it a point to track down the other RE's and play them on my brothers PlayStation.

It's pretty close between Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid but MGS is probably my favorite series. I'd say it was once I beat MGS1 I thought this is one of the best series, the thing with me is that I played MGS3 first and absolutely loved it, you could probably pin point it really to the ending of MGS3, one of the biggest emotional impacts in video games. It was one of those endings I had to take the next day just to absorb it and reflect. And then going back and playing MGS1 and MGS2 made me go "Okay, so this wasn't just a fluke, this series is fucking amazing". And once again, Kojima has me chomping at the bit for more with MGSV, the last time I was this insanely hyped for a game was MGS4 so go figure.

With Resident Evil, I also came into it late with RE4 like a lot of people. I thought it was one of the best games ever when I played it, totally blown away by it on a technical and gameplay level. Then I went back and played the classic REs, which is where a lot of people come to the realization they only like RE4 and RE5, but not me, I loved the old RE games. Since all I had at the time was a Gamecube I ended up with Zero and REmake. Initially I actually preferred Zero to REmake because I was a stupid kid and found REmake super goddamn hard. Once I actually had the balls to try REmake again I think that's what cemented RE as one of my favorite series. I really love the silly B-movie feel of the majority of the series but I also really like the genuine creepy atmosphere of REmake and the early bits of RE4.

Resident Evil first played it when it came out at a friends house when we rented it and never looked back I have a lot of them spanning many cosoles as well as the movies its a sickness much like the T-Virus.

Some one help me. I don't hate the movies they are what they are, just kinda sad that they never went with the George Romero script and his directing for it.

I first played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in late 2006/early 2007, at a time when I was really struggling with depression and dropping out of school. It was my escape; I spent hundreds of hours just exploring that world, going on adventures, and forming my own stories and memories. It was completely intoxicating, and I became much more interested in gaming as a result; I started listening to GameSpot's The Hotspot podcast around this time, and have followed the careers of Jeff, Brad, Vinny, and the late Ryan Davis ever since.

Skyrim just re-affirmed my absolute infatuation with Bethesda games, but more specifically with The Elder Scrolls. I loved Fallout 3, but it just didn't quite resonate with me as much as the fantasy setting of TES. Skyrim was what I had been waiting for; a huge mechanical refinement that removed a lot of Oblivion's clunkiness, while still providing a huge world to explore full of lore and adventure. I've never gone back to play the older games, despite the fact that a large number of TES fans claim Morrowind is the best in the series, and I haven't played TES:O, because I don't play MMOs - but to tell the truth, if I was going to play one, it would be the one I'd choose - but even based on just two games I can say without fail that no video game series means as much to me as The Elder Scrolls.

Beings a PS2 guy a the time, I bought the original Xbox for one reason only: to play Morrowind. That has become my favorite game of all time and Elder Scrolls (and Bethesda's Fallout) is my favorite series (I kind of have to put them together as they satisfy the same itch). While there's so much about the game that game that I love, the moment I knew that Morrowind was something special came while I was wandering the ashlands, working on a minor quest. I was lost, gingerly making my way through the area, feeling very vulnerable. This was early on in the game, so I wasn't even sure I was powerful enough to be where I was. The stupid ash storms kept screwing up my visibility, increasing my feeling that I was going to stumble into some horrible monster at any moment. Sure enough, in the distance, I spy some horrible monster, bigger than anything I had seen yet (mostly dealing with Cliff racers up until then). I quickly ducked down behind a ridge, hoping it didn't see me, and started making my way around it, occasionally risking a peek to keep track of its location.

That feeling was so very real. Morrowind had taking me off my couch and put me in it's world, making me feel as if I was truly there, painstakingly making my way through a hostile environment. No game had ever made me feel like that before and I thoroughly and completely hooked. I soon learned that the monster I was so fearful of was a Bull Netch, as creature that is only dangerous if you attack it first, which made the encounter that much more meaningful to me, as it enhanced that feeling of being in an unfamiliar environment where you can't tell friend from foe.

I ended up putting 100's of hours into that game, despite some terrible performance problems and bugs due to their save system. Once they announced the GOTY edition, where they were including expansions released for the PC version, I answered Bethesda's call to send in a save file, as they were hoping to fix the save problem they were having. I was thrilled to do this, because this was already my favorite game and wanted to help in any way I could to make it the best it could be. This netted me the Morrowind game guide (which was the size of a phone book) and a listing in the "special thanks" section of the game's credits. Always loved showing that to my other video game loving friends :)

MGS3 was massive for me. I loved the original and was slightly let down by the 2nd (purely because you didn't play as Snake the whole way through) but 3 solidified (pun intended) the series as my favourite. I loved the survival aspect and the tone of the game was right up my alley. I was also at an age where I could begin the appreciate the game on a slightly deeper level than when I played the first one. I must have been about 7 or 8 when I played MGS1 and the story made almost no sense to me.