My favorite games
In no particular order....
List items
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I first played this game on the PC and I played it through 3 times back-to-back. There's a lot that I like about this game. The gameplay is fun, it's gorgeous to look at, the splicers and big daddies provide a nice challenge (at least for me; YMMV). Mostly though, I really like the story and the way that it's told.
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I grew up in DC so it's fun to see all the places that I know represented in this game, even if they do play a little fast and loose with the geography. Beyond that, the story is quite good and the huge open world has tons of little hidden stuff to find. It's not much of a shooter which is why I primarily played it as a stealth game but I like that you have that choice.
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Hack and slash done right, and it really scratches that loot-lust itch. Enough of a story to keep things interesting but not enough that it gets in the way.
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The first 'real' shooter that I played so it still has a place in my heart even if it looks pretty dated today. It still plays pretty well, though.
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Gordon Freeman's long, bad day is a lot of fun to play. At the time, the physics-based puzzles were new and really interesting and there was a nice balance between the shooting and the puzzling. I think it says something about this game and the industry as a whole that, 6 years after this game's release, it still has some of the best in-game facial animations around.
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In a lot of ways, the overall story in this game is nothing particularly special. However, the individual team members that you recruit all have interesting stories and their various missions are fun to play. I like that Bioware has built a universe that feels real, even if most of it is completely peripheral to the story. I also like the fact that your decisions from the first game have some real effects on the universe in this game. Finally, I like the fact that you can actually die at the end. It's kind of a ballsy decision but I like the idea that your gameplay decisions can have a critical bearing on the outcome of the game.
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Really interesting puzzling combined with one of the funniest, most sarcastic villains in gaming. The only real knock against it is that it's too short.
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I'm a sucker for paper-and-pencil puzzles so this game kept me occupied for quite some time. In addition, though, I liked the tarot framework of the game as well as the journey aspect. Cliff Johnson produced a number of other games using the same basic framework but, for whatever reason, this one just seemed like it worked the best.
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The game that spawned a million cheap imitators (including, unfortunately, some of it's sequels). The puzzles were logical and challenging without ever feeling like they relied on cheap tricks to solve them. The story was interesting and was told in an interesting way. The worlds were beautiful and they had a real haunting quality to them. It's just a really well-designed and well-executed game and still, for me at least, the best of it's type.
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I like the humor of this game as well as the fact that all the 'minds' look and feel distinct. It goes a bit (OK, maybe a lot) off the rails in terms of difficulty at the very end but, for me at least, that doesn't negate all the fun up to that point.
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I never did feel like I entirely got the hang of the combat in this game but the stealth aspects and the look and feel more than made up for it. Beautiful, moody, menacing Arkham is, in many ways, the perfect backdrop for a Batman game. I also like the way that Batman's costume becomes more and more damaged as the night progresses. It's a small touch but it conveys the idea that the night is taking it's toll and how, unlike in other superhero games, the protagonist is not invincible. It give the game a bit of verisimilitude that most other games lack.
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This game is on here mostly because of the way that the story is told and for the way that it is not told. It's told in a more subtle way than in most other games, which beat you over the head and tell you how to feel about the proceedings. Enslaved leaves a lot of things unsaid; there's a lot of ambiguity in the relationship between the main characters and in the resolution of the story itself. I think it represents a more mature approach to storytelling in games, something that I think the industry badly needs.
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I like how this game plays with your expectations for a platformer by switching between 2D and 3D. It forces you to think about the puzzles in a different way and adds an extra dimension (no pun intended) to the gameplay. I just found it to be a lot more fun and interesting than a typical platformer.
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Filled with "OH MY GOD" moments, it's fun and satisfying to play. I like the decision to have you play as an anti-hero, even if Kratos does come across as a spoiled child most of the time. There's a reason why games of this type are always compared to this one; it simply does what it does the best of all of them.
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It looks great, the story is a rollicking old-style Saturday morning serial, and they fixed some of the problems with the shooting and platforming from the first game. Just lots of fun.
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The parkour stuff drove out of my fucking tree with frustration but it still wasn't enough to make me not love this game. The world is gorgeous and alive, the combat is fun, and there's plenty of other stuff to do. It's fun and challenging to try to get that perfect kill where you slide out of the crowd, do the deed and then disappear. It's not possible in all situations but in those that allow it, it's really satisfying. It also has one of the best musical scores around.
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My brother-in-law gave me this game for my birthday and I've been hooked ever since. Not perfect by any stretch, it still has a high nostalgia value for me.
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Playing against the computer, it became obvious after world 100 or so that the machine cheated. However, I still played this game a lot and enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm not much for on-line play mainly because I typically get my ass kicked, but this was one game where I really understood the mechanics and could actually be competitive against other people.
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I'm going to use this one as a catch-all for the Black Isle games as a whole even though I really should differentiate more. They were all excellent games but they all played more or less the same and had fairly similar stories. Still, I played them all and loved them all. As far as dungeon crawlers go, they were the gold standard.
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