The Five games that define you as a gamer

[CdnDemoniac]

5: Folklore - One of the few games that made me cry. Beautiful art, great story, and deep interesting characters that you care about not to mention being a hybrid of Kingdom Hearts and Pokemon which is some of the funnest gameplay I've had.

4: Super Mario RPG - One of the first games I played as a kid. Pretty much taught me to read and I loved the story.

3: Perfect Dark / Tribes 2 (I can't choose) - My all-time favourite FPSs, Perfect Dark for single player / splitscreen multiplayer and Tribes 2 for online multiplayer (even though I sucked balls at the game).

2: Bastion - Another game that gave me chills when I played it. It's my personal favourite example of what video games can do as narratives.

1: Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time - Encompasses everything I love about games. Its mix of puzzle-solving and adventure is what really defined what I find fun in games.

 

[GreenTeaGal]

Marvel Vs. Capcom - Really all side scroll, 2D, cell shaded, fast paced beat 'em up games with life bars & time limits and colorful characters. Also see: Samurai Showdown 4, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear

Bonk's Revenge (Turbo graphix) An old school and maybe slightly obscure cute platformer. These will probably always win points with me, but this one had a unique often bizarre premise. Also, I loved the idea of becoming all powerful simply but eating ham on the bone and beating dinosaurs to ash with my forehead.

Devil May Cry Series Super stylish action, with a very diversified weapon & skill system. Main character was hot and had an over the top personality. Where many male protagonists are mute, a blank slate or a fat space marine, it's a refreshing change. The games were ridiculous, but stupid fun.

Super Mario World First game I ever owned. As a kid it took me a full year to beat its 90+ levels. I actually teared up a bit at the ending screen at the ripe age of 9

God of War II I actually prefer GOW 2 to 1. This game just felt so much bigger, there was just MORE I thought. I know in ways it's not as hard as the 1st game, and it often conflicted with my morals, but I felt so magnificently badass playing it.

6-10: Blazing Lasers (Gunhead), Mrs. Pacman, Crash Bandicoot Games, Sonic 2 & Bubsy

 

[jrmyers]

I really learned what gaming was about for me the first time I played Zork. This was when it was new, 30 years ago. Jesus, time flies when you're playing games.

I was over at a friend's house and he said, "here, try this." I started playing and five hours later I looked up from the screen, thinking maybe a half hour had passed. I had joined another world, time had collapsed around me and ceased to mean anything. That's when I know I'm playing a great game. Here are 5 that made me:

Half-Life 1 & 2: I loved it for all the reasons mentioned in this thread. Because of Half-Life, I played almost nothing but FPS games for years...until:

GTA III: A shooting game in an open world. Oh my God. I could go anywhere and do what I wanted. Contrary to what everybody was arguing about then, the game was not immoral, but amoral. You made of it what you wanted. At one point, I car-jacked a little old lady, knocked her down but didn't finish her off. As I was getting into the car, she got up and began whaling on me with her umbrella. Just like in real life! I've played every GTA since and, as with all gateway drugs, it lead me to harder stuff:

TES III, IV, and V/ Fallout 3/ New Vegas: Shooting, hacking, slashing in an open world. Making choices and experiencing consequences. Becoming a part of those worlds...getting up from the computer and taking minutes to decompress, dreaming of the Wastes and Tamriel. When I finished Fallout 3 (for the second time), after playing all the DLC, I felt genuine sadness.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: This trilogy pulls off the neat trick of being so realistic and so other-worldly at the same time. And terrifying. Really fucking scary.

Two honorable mentions: Just Cause 2 just 'cause it's SO MUCH FUN! And Far Cry 2 for telling such a moral tale and having the balls to keep it real right up to the tragic ending(s).

By my count, I just mentioned 15 games. That's five, er, times three.....

 

[Greater Evil]

1.MGS2 in combination with MGS4 because MGS2 is my favourite game ever due to how much of a fuck you it is to the gaming audience and despite it's flaws I think the way it worked its message through is goddamn genius. MGS4 is paired with it cause not only is it the worst fucking thing on earth, but it's so pointedly the worst fucking thing on earth and people still liked it. MGS2 was designed to be unlikeable and MGS4 was designed to be awful and the succeeded so spectacularly that I love them for it. Also I love the atmosphere of MGS2 and something about the horrible controls feels just lovely to me.

2.The entire FF series, I don't stop fucking playing it, I hate it cause they all suck so much balls but I CANNOT STOP MYSELF and I force myself to do EVERYTHING. Gotta go fast man. Gotta get all those unnecessary secret weapons that allow me to last hit the last boss or whatever while adding nothing but extra hours wasted to my horrible playing experience.

3.SotC (and to a much lesser extent Ico), for it's minimalistic and slightly subverted approach to both gameplay and the general video game hero story. I'm sure other games have done it before, or even done it better, but I haven't played them.

4.Cave Story, just cause this is the game where I can't define what I thought about why it might be good, it just had tight controls and I loved it, and it's the only game where I can't say what I think is good about it but I still love it.

5. Elder Scrolls I guess cause I couldn't think of another game. Not cause I'm obsessed with the series, but because it defines a part of what I think is wrong even with the parts of gaming that are trying to expand gaming. They're fucking doing it wrong. No quest has any depth and the games are released as buggy pieces of shit. I'd rather the world be a 10th the size if it means I get 10 times the amount of depth and that many fewer bugs. Also they toned down the games since Morrowind, which is another thing. In Morrowind (god bless it's horribly bugged gameplay), the combat had more depth than in later Elder Scrolls games and there was generally more variety in the enemies. Now all that you fight is fucking bandits and wolves. they're taking the good things out of open world gameplay for the sake of "expanding" or whatever.

 

[Greater Evil]

the biggest kick in the ass was that in Skyrim I couldn't hunt whales

 

[Slitzkin]

Metal Gear Solid: Tactical Espionage Action
This is probably the perfect game. Everything from the technical aspects to the creativity is perfect. The story is more than strong enough to stand alone from the Metal Gear series and it doesn't have the convolution of the later games. The characters are all unique, the design is unique, the mind fucks are unique, everything is unique and just plain amazing. I go back and finish it nearly every year.

Final Fantasy IX
I fell in love with the story, the characters, the adventure. This was the first game where I really ever felt something for the characters. I wanted them to suceed and live happily ever after.

Kingdom Hearts
As I boy I loved Disney and I loved Final Fantasy. Add them together with an emotional and deep story coupled with pretty gosh darn good gameplay you've a game that stays with you forever.

 

[Arcobalen]

This is a tough one.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Kingdom Hearts
Final Fantasy IX
Runescape
Spyro: Year of the Dragon

 

[Jaeke]

Call of Duty 2
I remember playing this game one-on-one with a close friend. I also remember trading off death with the campaign. This is the grandfather of the phenomenon. I still maintain that the campiagns in this game (especially the Russian and first mission of the American) are better than anything other military-themed first person shooters have to offer.

Finally!!
Someone in that rare %1 of people who remembers the greatness (and in my opinion the last great Call of Duty) of CoD 2!

Ahh I remember sitting on that Mg42 mowing down Krauts with no reinforcments in a shelled out building with no one but my sargeant behind me...

And then the potatoe grenades I was throwing a hours before.

 

[TheCrapMaster]

1: MechCommander, probably the first game i ever bought for PC when i was young, dident understand much english when i got it, but somehow i completed the entire game and it got me intrested in RTS games. And sold on mechs.

2: Starcraft, made me confirm of what i belived with mechcommander, i loved RTS games, and this game realy helped me with my english with all the dialog between missions etc. And was also the first game i played online, remember the good old dial up internet and to put some money in the jar before using the internet*sighs*

3: Unreal tournament, made me like shooters as well, realy helped me giving good reaction time and "dodge" and duke skills, tho made me have a cynical eye towards "realistic" shooters where you cant rocket jump, thank god Tribes Ascend came, hadent played multiplayer shooter for years before that, seeing there were almost only military shooters out there.

4: Fallout 2, hadent played fallout 1 before fallout 2, remember i got it for free from a computer magazine my dad bought. This is probably the game i have replayed the most of all the games i played. Made me a sucker for not just sci-fi, but also post-apocalyptic settings.

5: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, probably one of the best games i ever played, liked it even more then fallout with all the mysteri and the steampunk setting and etc. It made my standard of how a game is supposed to be built, the music, setting, background, story. I can write 10 pages about what makes this game great. This is what hocked me to story driven rpgs, fallout wasent THAT story driven, it was more fun. Arcanum every quest fitted in with the world.

 

[Yeager942]

I'll keep this short and civil.

Planescape: Torment
I'll get accused of being elitist, but few other games made me baw as hard as I did when I played this game. Probably the best written game I've played.

Psychonauts
The funniest game I've played. (Portal 2 and PS:T coming in second)

Half-Life 2
For first revealing to me the subtle advantages video games have in terms of story-telling.

Dark Souls
See Half-Life 2 but also add in Vagina Dragons, and Oreos and Smores.

Knights of the Old Republic I/II

Spoiler

Finding out that you were Revan blew my fucking mind.

 

[XzarTheMad]

Alright, my five, in no particular order:

I: Neverwinter Nights. I always loved Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale etc., but Neverwinter Nights combined the perfect elements of storytelling and action gameplay, meaning I never went too long without another interesting thing to do, or power to unlock. I pick it up every once in a while and still love it. Graphics might be kind of shit for today, but it's still one of the principle games to "forge" me as a gamer.

II: Morrowind. I picked up Morrowind close after release, 'cause it was on sale, but my computer couldn't handle it until several years later when I got access to a new machine. Since then it has become probably the most immersive game I've tried, and its rich lore really helped make me the massive TES fanboy I am today.

III: Left4Dead/Team Fortress 2: While quite dissimilar, these games share two qualities that put them on the top of my list. One, they are both made by valve, and the quality shows. Two, these were the games that forged, through fire and bloodshed, me and my best friends together. I can't count the amount of hours I've spent with those guys shooting things in co-operation, but I've had the time of my life.

IV: Star Control 2. Not that I ever played it much (I did beat it with ample assistance from a walkthrough), but it's a game that every geek who knows it can bond over. Me and my brother loved playing it together, and the music still sticks in my head like gum. Absolutely brilliant.

V: Unreal Tournament / UT2K4. I've never been good at shooters, but UT is my game of choice if I had to have a deathmatch with someone. I played it when I was a kid, I played it growing up, and I'll still play it when the mood hits. It's another of those games I played with my brother, which adds a deeper level of appreciation for it.


Honorable mentions: Doom II, Carmageddon, Fallout 2/3/NV, Worms 2, Skyrim, Dungeon Keeper, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Transport Tycoon, and many more.

 

[Norrdicus]

Spyro 2 - one of the first console games I owned and it cemented my love for 3D action adventure platformers. I hope the indie scene gets out of its 2D platformer phase so I can be bombarded with my favorite childhood genre again.

Morrowind - my second proper western RPG and my most favorite game. Ever. The amount of freedom you get, and the fact that the game lets you figure stuff on your own, makes exploration so fulfilling when you find something good

Final Fantasy IX - during late PS1 and entire PS2 era, I preferred story-oriented content to pure action, and FFIX had a big part in it. It's flashy, comical yet occasionally very dark, has a lovable cast and an amazing soundtrack.

Knights of the Old Republic 2 - Although Final Fantasy IX had molded my initial interest for story, KOTOR 2 showed me how much more interesting stories become when you drop the whole "good&evil" angle

Splinter Cell - Now I enjoy being stealthy, and in any RPG where I can choose, I will ALWAYS pick the stealth skill. Stealth feels like having that "Perfect KO" to me

 

[Monkey_Warfare]

Sonic the hedgehog 3, the first game I got and the first game I completed. Nostalgia for this is why I still play sonic games in the hopes of another like this (though generations and colours were surprisingly good)
Doom 2, consumed my childhood and turned me into a PC gamer. Aside from a handful of games like Shadow of the collossus or Kingdom Hearts I have never wished I had a console since this.
Command and conquer tiberium sun, while I played the original C&C and red alert I never got into them. Tiberium Sun is where i started to love stratergy (spoiler: KANE LIVES)
Rome Total War, why i primarily play strategy nowadays. While it probably has the least gameplay time on this list by a long way its where i actually learned tactics beyond send everything to point X and stomp
DotA mod and DotA 2. 115 hours in the past 2 weeks (yay for diretide), over 900 hours total before the game is released, nuff said.

 

[OneOfTheMichael's]

Fallout series
Only game I ever played..... for hours and hours and hours.....

What else......
Sorry thats the only game that defines me.

Oh and minecraft!
toke my passion of lego from childhood and put it into a amazing game.

 

[Fredvdp]

1. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

This game taught me English. I managed to beat it at the age of nine and barely spoke English when I started playing it. The game's speech and subtitles were both in English.

2. Super Mario World

My favorite game of all-time and one I've beaten many, many times. This is the game that made me a Nintendo fan.

3. Mass Effect

Bought it without knowing much about it, other than it was made by the guys who made KotOR. I'd never been hooked to a game that much before. I remember beating the game on a hot summer day. I turned it off, went for a swim, and though "Wow, that was awesome."

I ran the game on a very crappy PC that didn't meet the system requirements. I then started reading about PC hardware and upgraded my PC to play it on a higher resolution.

4. Tetris

This game helped me through a lot of exams. The most recent version I used is Tetris Friends, which runs in a browser.

5. Donkey Kong Country

My first game on a home console. This is where it all began. The graphics still amaze me.

 

[MANIFESTER]

Baldur's Gate 2: My quintessential RPG experience, I go back and play it all the through every other year and still find new ways of doing things or little secrets I missed. I have spent so much time on this game, but still not as much as...

World of Warcraft: God this game was a time sink, and looking back on my time with the game I both love it and hate it. I hated having to sink so much time into farming everything, but at the same time being a Main Tank in 40 man groups is some of the most exhilarating experiences I have had in a game.

Unreal Tournament 2004/ Counterstrike: Kinda cheating, but these two games got me into competitive/ multiplayer gaming. Even won some regional tournaments in Unreal back in the day that actually helped me pay off some of my bills.

Warcraft 3: Another game I just kept coming back too, not just for the campaign, but also for maps like Dota, that made me interested in creating User Created content.

Super Smash Bros. : Not really a game that defines me, but my relationship to my siblings. Hell despite being more "Mature" with jobs, fiances, etc... we are still going to sit down for a grudge match this Thanksgiving.

 

[excalipoor]

Final Fantasy VII
The first game to ever blow me away with its story, setting, and characters. Also, my introduction to Final Fantasy and the JRPG in general.

Spyro the Dragon
The third game I ever owned for PS1. 3D platforming perfection, I still play through it and its two sequels once or twice a year.

Pokémon Yellow
I was a Pokémon nut before I ever owned a Game Boy, but Yellow was my entry to the games. Pokémon taught me a little something about balance.

Halo: Combat Evolved
The first console FPS I ever enjoyed, as well as the progenitor of our now traditional split-screen bash parties.

Anarchy Online
Baby's first MMO. While the broken and dated mechanics prevent me from enjoying the game these days, nostalgia is strong with this one. In no other game have I had such a good time doing absolutely nothing.

Honorable mentions (because they deserve it)
Armored Core
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
Crash Team Racing
Diablo
Fallout
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98
Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy X
Ignition
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile
Neverwinter Nights
NHL 98
Pokémon Silver
Quake
Sonic & Knuckles
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Starcraft
Tekken 3
Vampire: The Masquerade - Boodlines
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
World of Warcraft

 

[ianeddy44]

1) Super Mario Bros. for the SNES. This was the first videogame I ever played, and I spent SO much time on it as a child. My parents began to restrict my hours to one per day or as much as I want on rainy days. I fell in love with videogaming.

2) Unreal Tournament GOTY. Now this game was my first shooter, and it really shaped my preferences for later games that I completely loved. It piqued my interest in shooters and got me onto the PC side of gaming.

3) Ratchet & Clank. This franchise is my favourite of all time, there is no doubt in my mind. It was explorative, it was otherworldly, it was exciting, it was funny, it was futuristic and space-themed, it was so creative. I played the 3rd first, Up Your Arsenal because I got it for christmas. Then I bought the 1st and the 2nd immediately after. Deadlocked came out and I bought that, but things had changed with that one. When the PS3 came along, our system came along with the Ratchet & Clank game, but it didn't feel the same. My interest has since fallen off, regrettably.

4) Dota 2. It's very recent. In fact, it hasn't been fully released quite yet, but this game caught my attention back in March and since then I've accumulated about 700 hours of playtime. Each match is new. Each match is exciting for different reasons. I've found a group of guys to play with consistently, and that has given this game another level of fun. My favourite part of this game is how incredibly situational things are, and how vast the mastery of this game goes. As I've said, I've played 700 hours so far, and I'm still learning stuff all the time. That really entices me. Something that I can play and play and play and still be learning and improving. It doesn't grow stagnant or get old.

5) The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Now this was the first robust RPG I ever played. I tried it out first on my friend's Xbox and really liked it. I asked for it for Christmas that year, but didn't recieve it. A later birthday proved very successful though, as I got the GOTY PC edition, which included both Bloodmoon and Tribunal expansion packs. This game introduced me to how open and complex a game world can be. One thing that has always baffled me is how there are literally BILLIONS of other people having the same extraordinary experience of living, and this resonated in Morrowind. I got the impression that it was a living, breathing world and he characters each had their own lives. The immersion was incredible. It was also hugely explorative, otherworldly, bizarre, and there was so much to discover. Lovely.