My favorite game of all time, hands down, is Super Metroid. It's the game that solidified my interest in gaming and drew me in like no other game before had.
This generation, though, is a bit trickier. Portal 2 is a great contender. I have no personal complaints about it. It's one of the few shining examples of positively amazing writing and dialogue in games, and the story is top-notch and well-done to boot. Its pacing is perfect, its puzzles are intriguing, and its atmosphere is engaging. But I hesitate to call it my favorite game of this generation. I've only beaten it once and I actually didn't play it all at once. I picked it up every now and then over the course of a few months before actually beating it, so something about it kept me from really wanting to play it for hours on end.
Dead Space 2 is another great contender, but again I'm quite wary of saying it's my favorite of this generation. Its gameplay and presentation are both top-notch and its dialogue is also quite well written. Its storyline, though, left me with more questions than answers and there's no sign of a third game yet. Its atmosphere is pretty good, though it almost completely eschews the horror atmosphere of the first game for a more action-y atmosphere - think the Alien-Aliens progression here. But some parts of the game annoy me and there are some crazy difficulty spikes in the latter half of the game, like they didn't have quite enough time to get it perfectly right.
Call of Duty 4 is also quite a contender. I don't think any other game balances its story and its gameplay so perfectly. Neither ever takes precedence over the other and it serves to make one of the best FPS campaigns of all time. Unfortunately, it's far too short and has less player agency than I would like, so I can't really name it either.
I'm also tempted to say Skyrim, but then I feel that its quests aren't as good as Oblivion's. The game feels less like a world and more like a to-do list at times, especially the Civil War quest which should have been much better. I also find the Companions quest to be downright bad, it never feels involving and just ends. It's then weird when you have many different honorary titles but people still treat you like they did in the beginning of the game.
Halo 3 is pretty far up there, but at least one level sucks pretty badly. Its multiplayer is what kept me coming back to it. In fact, I think I'll just nominate Halo 3. I can name some problems with it but I remember finally putting it down because I got tired of playing it sometime in 2009. And I still bring it out every now and then for old times' sake. Yeah, I'll say it.
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