The Five games that define you as a gamer

[Skeleon]

In no particular order:

System Shock 2
Atmosphere. This one has the thickest atmosphere I've ever experienced in gaming. The sound is amazing, be that ambient sounds, music, enemies, audiologs or transmissions. The graphics are (and always were, even back then) awful. But that doesn't matter, never did. Not when everything else about the game is done so well. It's also the first time I've really, strongly experienced an FPS/RPG hybrid, which is nowadays pretty much my favorite genre (Fallout 3 and NV, the STALKER games, Tron 2.0, Arx Fatalis, Skyrim, you name it).

Sacrifice
As seen above, I like games with hybrid genres. I also happen to like weird games and games with floating islands for some reason. There's quite an overlap between the two, funnily enough (I'm thinking of Project Nomads here). Sacrifice is a rare RTS that throws you right into the action. Not like the silly little hero units viewed from above in Warcraft 3 but as the actual protagonist of an epic story, leading his army on the battlefield and casting world-shattering magic from a third person perspective. Add to that some dry, dark humour, challenging enemies and tricky sidequests and you've got a perfect mixture.

Descent
Surprising how spooky a game with nothing but robots as enemies can get. Not only are some of these machines quite monstrous (with bloody claws even, although that might just be rust), but the game overall, an actual rare 3D game in terms of movement, is disorienting as hell. It's also one of the first games with dynamic lighting which they make great use of, especially in the later levels. Dark winding and twisting passages, flickering flares, stalking robotic hulks. This game is amazing.

Diablo 2
I love Diablo 1 because it is much more atmospheric and feels more dangerous, but Diablo 2 was more addictive to me. It was less about the story and immersion and more about running, gunning, looting and so on in various different settings. All parts that were there in Diablo 1 to a degree but much more in the background. Diablo 2 was pretty much my first trip into fast-paced hack and slash ARPG games with plenty of other games I love being in the same vein, like Torchlight 1 and 2 or Titan Quest. I've whiled away many hours with Diablo 2 and the various games like it.

Dawn of War
Warhammer 40K finally takes back its style, setting and strategy genre from Blizzard in this great RTS title and its follow-ups. I particularly loved the domination-style resource-gathering via control points always keeping the heat up and the front moving back and forth. While I was a big fan of Warcraft 2 and 3, this is an RTS I enjoy even better. Also, honorary mention for Chaos Gate which properly introduced me to the WH40K universe in the first place. Being turn-based, it's very different of course, and I decided not to use it here because I'm not really a player of such games apart from Chaos Gate and Incubation.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

1. All the early Lucas Arts Adventure Games

I grew up with them during the age of 4-10 or something. Played them together with my father. Probably one of the strongest influences on my person be it gaming or reallife.

You can't do that! It's unfair. (If I knew you could just dump the entire output of a company instead of writhing in agony over which one to choose...)

Hm, but it wasn't one game specifically that defined me back then. It was Lucas Arts that did.
But if i've had to chose it would be easy. Monkey Island 2 by a long shot.

 

[Aerduin]

Old geezer reply here

Elite (on Amstrad cpc) simply an awesome game in its time, wasted far too much time on it when at school and NEVER made Elite ;0( got to deadly before Witch space and the Thargoid legions did for me.

Baldurs Gate 1 +2 : Simply the best party based rpg I have played. Bioware doing what they do best.

Starwars Knights of the Old Republic: - See above . Bioware rocking again, amazing RPG story line this time with lightsabers.

Everquest : The grand-daddy of MMORPGS ? Certainly a game that although at times a terrible grind had that strange quality that you appreciated everything you got, as you had to earn it.
The game that had "Trains" and corpse runs engrained into its psyche. Great fun.

Elder Scrolls series. Played them all since Daggerfall, and to me they evolve hence not picking one individual game. The modding community makes these timeless.

 

[teebeeohh]

the games are more or less in chronological order

links awakening
i got a gameboy and two games when i was 5. i didn't like super mario land 2 and i wanted to play this one so i bugged my sister for a week to teach me how to read. yeah i learned reading a year early because i wanted to play a game.

there was starcraft here. it is gone now because it has to be replaced by
sacrifice
my god that game is great. it has still unique mechanics, still looks great because of the unique artstyle and had one of the first nice gaming twists i didn't see coming.
you also got to kill 3 or 4 gods per campaign and that's always nice

fallout 2
it's fallout, it offered greater freedom than the original fallout and was the first time i got to explore a huge world, something that still ranks as number 1 of reasons why i like games. and it had a battery powered car, something that the great baldurs gate 2 was clearly lacking
deus ex/system shock2
two great games that completely blew my mind at the time and while they did a lot of thing similar deus ex was very much on the talky, mans own cruelty end of the spectrum while system shock was very much on the survival end.
quake 3
if you have never play this, go check out quake live now. it's colorful, was absolutely beautiful at the time and is still one of the fastest, most "twitchy" games i ever played. and i suck at it now

 

[Bombchucker]

1. Oblivion: That game got me into the RPG genre and I wasted countless hours in exploring Cyrodil

2. Halo: My very first game and the one that got me into gaming in general. I finished the whole campaign when I went for a sleepover at my friends place and I got an Xbox the next month just to play it

3. Mass Effect 1-2: Introduced me to good and bad choice mechanics in gaming and how much power characterisation has in a story

4. Mass Effect 3: Made me realise that EA suck and showed me that you shouldn't introduce new characters at the end of a story

5. Assassins Creed 2/brotherhood/revelations: The stories in these three games are by far some of the best iv'e seen in gaming and so far I am loving AC3

 

[Casual Shinji]

I only have one real defining game, and that's Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.

It was the first game that made me realize games could be more amazing and imaginative than movies, and it turned me into the gamer I am today. No other game has been able to make the same impact on me apart from maybe Resident Evil 2, Silent Hill 2, and Resident Evil 4. But even those games are still very much inspired by other fiction. Abe's Oddysee was a totally unique world unlike any other that came before or after.

 

[Godhead]

1. Dungeon Siege: I tried to play Diablo at a very young age but could never get very far in, then this game came along and was the first true game that I had ever experienced where I would not get bored playing for hours on end. Not to mention the time I would spend at Fortress Kroth and Glacern just to listen to the music.

Spoiler: Seriously

Spoiler: This shit is awesome

Fuckin' Oaf, that is a good soundtrack. Most people mention pretty average game music, but this shit is great. I'm going to have to check it out. Thanks mate.

Is there any sequels worth getting too?

There's an expansion to the first one called Legends of Aranna that is very similar to the first with some new locations and a new baddie. There were two "sequels" to it; Dungeon Siege 2 and Dungeon Siege 3. 2 was an ok game but it never drew me in as much because the beginning is very slow paced and the beginning is able to take a good one or two hours to get through. Also it has a big city that you can relax in where the first was just running through dungeons, finding a small town like Glacern, buying some equipment, and then head off for more dungeon crawling.

Dungeon Siege 3 is a good game but it was so buggy at launch and they handled the co-op so poorly I've only played about half an hour of it. You can buy Dungeon Siege 1, 2, and 3 with 3's expansion pack on Steam for $30. I don't believe it's on GOG.

Edit: There are also copies of Legends of Aranna on amazon for $25.

 

[prowll]

Wow, this is a damn near impossible task. I see a lot of good responses here... and I don't think I can narrow it down to 5.... OK, let's go for this.

E.T the Extra Terrestrial - OK, yes, the game that ends up on almost every 'worst game ever' list. I got given this as a christmas gift when it first came out (Thanks, Grandma! I can blame you for EVERYTHING past this point...) and was one of the first games that I definitively beat, and beat into the ground.

Warcraft 3 - OK, Blizzard, you got me hooked after the first act's cinematic. That 3 minute clip still makes me tear up, and got me hooked (again) on Diablo, and WoW.

Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall - Bethesda, you incredible harlot. This game was crap, why can I not quit you? You even made me come back four more times!

GTA: San Andreas - Got the first (hot coffee!) version, and played and played and played... and then realized there was a map in the case. Sweet! How much terrain have I covered? .... maybe 1/10th. AT BEST. Dear god that was what building a huge explorable world was all about, and should be the template for all sandbox games. If you're giving us a huge world, go all out.

Half-Life: Everything I know about first person shooters, I learned from Gordan Freeman. I love the gameplay, but cannot stand the CoD/Black Op/Medal genre. At all.

Honorable mention, the Mass Effect series. Not for playing it, but for not. I played for 3 hours on the first one, went 'holy crap, this is utter shite', and tossed it. I don't see the appeal...

 

[Uzi-Bazooka]

Age of Empires I've been playing this game series since I was a year old, and I still love them with all my heart. They introduced me to a love of RTSs, a love of strategy gaming in general, and a love of video games, since again, it was my first. Best game in the series, in my opinion, was actually the spinoff Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.

Doom II: Hell on Earth AoE introduced me to games, Doom II introduced me to gaming. Still one of my favorite, fast-paced, actiontastic games ever, which also got me into FPSs in a BIG way.

The Curse of Monkey Island introduced me to my favorite genre of videogames ever - the graphic adventure game. Also introduced me to the Monkey Island series, which is fantastic. Still earns a place on my top games ever for its humor, art style, puzzles, and because MURRAY. Had a huge effect on my sense of humor as well as my sense of storytelling. Arrg, mateys.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl My first big non-PC games. I still remember going to friends' houses to play it before finally saving up to buy a copy of my own. A game that still stands up well today, and a game that connected me with one of the finest people I've ever met, my best friend.

Alien Swarm One of the most sadly underappreciated games in gaming. I have poured hours and hours into this with my friends, having discussions about strategy, loadouts, weapons that last long into the nights. Taught me that I didn't have to be alone as a gamer; that there's a community out there of people as obsessed as I am. I have still never won an actual campaign in this game, and it's quite possible that I never will. I don't even slightly care.

 

[prowll]

Yay, another post no one will ever read!

Okay, I already know a few of them, but I'll see what I can figure out about the others.

1. SimAnt
This is all I could think of to put here, but it's one of the first games I remember playing outside of school. It represents my interest in weird stuff that no one else has ever heard of, which makes me sad.

2. Riven
The first game to not only really grab me but also to make me interested in worldbuilding which, as a result, has been my favorite hobby for 15 years now. It's also now the #1 draw for me in most games, books, and movies.

3. Final Fantasy XI
My first MMO, and also the first game I played that wasn't adventure (the Myst series), educational (Oregon Trail and the like), or some bizarre indie thing I found for free online (Nelda Nockbladder's Anatomy Lesson). This is the game that opened me up to gaming as a whole, rather than just being interested in the occasional artsy game, and also created an MMO-shaped hole in my life when I gave it up. (GW2 has filled that hole nicely, though it doesn't define me like the other games on this list and so I won't put it here.) It also resulted in an annoying character that has lived in my head for over 5 years and comments on everything, but the less said about that the better.

4. Silent Hill 2
This is the game that made me realize the true potential of games to affect me in ways that movies and books never could. Not only that, it changed my life: it made me more introspective and careful about repressing anything. I'm still looking for something to make me feel the same way this game did.

5. Journey
Every aspect of this game is one flavor of my personal gaming catnip: a highly atmospheric game with an interesting and beautiful aesthetic, excellent animations, a creatively designed world, a sense of mystery, a minimalistic yet touching story, an endearing player character, intriguing interactions between characters, a focus on puzzles and exploration rather than combat, a fantastic soundtrack, and a lack of spoken dialogue (for some reason I always like that). This game perfectly encapsulates my taste in entertainment.

Read it. I was surprised by your lack of what I would call 'standard' conflict. Most of your conflict here is you against the world, not really you against 'someone else'. I may be mistaken on a couple though.

Captcha: Stand by me. Noted without comment...

 

[OblivionSoul]

No particular order here.

1. Metal Gear Solid 3. My favourite stealth game of all time. The story is definitely the best in the series, and the setting and gameplay are great.

2. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Another great stealth game. This one has probably my favourite futuristic setting of any game ever. Adam is a great character to play as.

3. Mario Kart 64. This one had to be on here. It was my very first game. I believe over the years I've probably sunk 500 hours into it.

4. Assassin's Creed 2. The best in the series (so far, I like three a lot from what I've played though), and I think Ezio is one of the best protagonists in gaming.

5. Fable 3. I love the setting (industrial revolution era Britain) and the feel of this game.

 

[bafrali]

Rayman Origins: It simply surpassed any other platformer i have played. It is like concentrated joy

Half Life: Still replaying this game and still find something new to marvel at

Red Alert 3: It barely managed to dethrone Age of Mythology with its tanks.

Bastion: Sniff...

DMC3: I have yet to find a game with weapons that are all fun to use other than this gem.

Honorable mention: Deus EX which is pure brilliance.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

Read it. I was surprised by your lack of what I would call 'standard' conflict. Most of your conflict here is you against the world, not really you against 'someone else'. I may be mistaken on a couple though.

Captcha: Stand by me. Noted without comment...

Yep. MMOs are really my only exception to this, and even then I don't play them for the combat.

I've never been interested in fighting other people, in real life or in games, and I think the world (or yourself) being the challenge you overcome is a more interesting kind of conflict.

Orrrr I just really suck at fighting in games.

You know, one or the other.

 

[Inconspicuous Trenchcoat]

These games defined my favorite type of game environments (in physical, emotional and virtual senses) and play styles. Either multi-player competitive rushes, or immersive exploration are my cup of tea. And exploration includes exploring interesting geometry too (I should probably try rock climbing), that's why I like Elder Scrolls, platformers, Assassin's Creed parkour and custom FPS maps so much. The geometry can get really zany in those things. I guess I mean I love being a path finder, if that makes any sense. That's why modern shooters bore me (sometimes), it's all flat, constricted and uniform. You're not a path finder in any sense. Haha, I just realized my favorite Tribes Ascend class is Pathfinder.

-I'd say StarCraft and WarCraft 3's custom map community led me down the path to discovering one of my favorite genres: MOBAs/LanePushers/DotA-likes. I've never come close to finishing either game's campaign or played more than maybe 50 actual online games between them. I was always absorbed in the awesome ideas presented in community maps. My favorite was ENFOS Team Defense, it was like cooperative DotA vs hordes of brainless bots. For me, that really solidified the appeal of controlling one powerful hero RTS style without worrying about anything else but tactics and teamwork. This led into me trying DotA; after several beat downs I retreated to the internet to search for advice, which is when I found out about League of Legends. I got into its closed beta and played almost nothing else for the next 2 years. Learning a deep game with the rest of the community is an amazing experience. There was no pressure, everyone was learning together--the community was much friendlier back then. Beta League of Legends is one of the best gaming times I've ever had.

-That's not where my multi-player career started. Counter-Strike introduced me to the rabbit hole of competitive online gaming. The rush was so powerful and engrossing that I couldn't stand to play single player for the next few years. It also cultured my love of LAN parties. Playing CS in a crowded internet cafe with my friends, where everyone there played CS together in a LAN, were some of the best times in my gaming life.

-Super Mario 64: I'd been to arcades and seen the bountiful graphics they offered. But, the 64 (I didn't own a Playstation yet) was the first time I'd had amazing 3D in my own house. That game greatly strengthened my immersion and commitment to the hobby, through awe inspiring graphics and worlds to explore. I liked the actual game too Got every star and Yoshi gave me 99 useless lives for it D: ?

-Star Ocean: The Second Story *spoilers ahead*: This was my big childhood JRPG. Final Fantasy 3, 7 and 8 were epic too, but Star Ocean got me out of bed 60-90 minutes early every school day. The characters were well developed, the story was incredible (your planet is destroyed! The second half of the game is on an alien planet!? I was depressed and felt as far flung and lost as the characters did when that happened. Some stories elements were lost on my young mind, but it was epic. The combat was real-time (with pausing) and had lots of action, so it avoided the normal RPG pratfalls of tedious combat. Also, that game has an Iron Chef competition! And there's like 50 different secondary stats and some of them you're not even sure what they're for like Poker Face. The game was huge in scope and I loved exploring both worlds.

-The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: A game that proved to me I'll take freedom and interesting places to look at and explore over game play. I've never been as immersed in a game as this one. I never understood the game's systems well so that added an extra layer of enchanting mystery. I loved how Morrowind made me so in sync with my character. I was a lost prisoner in a strange, unknown environment too. I've never completed the main quest, I simply wander. I loved making new characters, but I always did the same thing every game: I went speechcraft and sneaky sneaky. I could rarely kill anything greater than a mudcrab in a fight, but I robbed everyone blind and beguiled the townsfolk. My favorite playthrough was running around aimlessly as a Khajit, excited to see what I'd find over the next hill. I'd free every slave I came across (I didn't even know their were slaves in this world!) and steal every scrap of bread I could find. The memories of that game--it was so beautiful and dreadful every time it rained.

Achievement Unlocked: Stop Reading Forums and Do Something, Anything!

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Lets see:

Star Wars: Rouge Squadron. The first game that I replayed multiple times, and one of the first games I ever played.

I'm sorry. So very, very, very sorry.

But it's Rogue. "Rouge" is a French word for the colour red, or alternately, what women tend to slap on their lips to look pretty in some occasions. "Rouge" is not an epithet that designates people going against an established authority.

Again, I'm sorry, but that was my Pedant Chromosome kicking in. That one mistake really gets my goat because everyone makes it all the damn time.

Ahem.

My personal titles would have to be the following:

Myst: the first PC game to really catch my attention, Myst awakened me to the fact that you could play games that tease your brain without confirming the then-prevalent notion that gaming was for kids with too much free time on their hands. It was the first storyline I cared about and the first universe I really invested myself in. I don't think I'd be lying if I said Myst is my personal Star Wars.

Killer Instinct for the SNES: this being the first fighting game I really got into. It was the first game that showed me how it indeed is possible to physically destroy a controller because you've reached your personal plateau of efficiency with a character. Killer Instinct forced me to go looking for my entertainment outside of your then-standard outlets like Toys 'R Us and introduced me to the practice of bargain-hunting console games - a practice I now extend to the PC.

Plus, I kicked ass with Cinder and Glacier. I played against all the kids in my neighbourhood who almost all had the game, and I kicked some serious ass.

Half-Life: prior to it coming out, my experience with shooters was limited to the Doom and Quake alumni and to the really basic days of the Shareware era. "You're a guy with a gun/wand/badass mutated appendage, here are some bad guys, go to town on them". I used to think Duke Nukem 3D was a crown jewel in the medium because, hey, I was somewhere around thirteen years old and a pixellated lady who flashes her boobies? SUBVERSIVE!

Half-Life changed all that. This was the first shooter to give me a world and a story to sink my teeth into, with as much seriousness and passion as Myst. This was the first time I played a game that terrified me not because of how inhuman the sprites looked, but because of how believably frail I felt in the face of all that slotting this goddamn crystal in that goddamn anti-mass-spectrometer caused.

Half-Life is the first game that made me feel guilty and that also managed to turn that guilt into the gradual understanding of my being an unstoppable badass.

Mario Kart: not so much for the game itself, but because I remember how I bonded with other people over it. I remember getting into fights because I was too good for some other guy's liking, I remember patching up rocky friendships over my submitting myself to the later tracks on the Star Cup, which always kicked my ass. I remember my occasional peals of Mode 7 vertigo...

MicroProse's Grand Prix 2: I was never good at the game, not even anywhere remotely close to decent. I remember it because this was one of the few games I was lucky enough to share with my father. He'd try to teach me how to handle hairpin turns or the more swervy areas of certain curves, we'd talk for hours about the benefits of certain tune-ups for certain cars and drivers...

I'm still not much of a racing aficionado, but I have a healthy respect for the medium and at least some measure of understanding. Considering that, I can't not be glad to have played it.

XCOM: UFO Defense: just as twitch-fests were starting to become more common, there was this game who actively punished you for rushing your guys into the field like you were in a personal recreation of an eighties action flick. I absolutely loved the more deliberate pacing, and I tried to share it with my father, just as he shared Grand Prix 2 with me. He could never get past the silly premise, however, and tended to look on the game's tactical aspects as being less worthy of consideration because of it.

Hey, I tried, at least.

I'll always remember getting my boys butchered to the sound of the Smashing Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness". It's a weird juxtaposition if there's ever been one but hey, that's life for ya.

The Settlers 2: Gold Edition: the feeling of starting with a shipwrecked crew and ending up with a continent-spanning empire is something no HD remake or snazzy-looking sequel could ever fix. I loved watching my shitty pixellated roads stretch out over my shitty pixellated hills and flatlands, to the point where the game got me to consider some of the colder proponents in the genre, from Civilization II all the way to SimCity 3000.

The Sims: as far as virtual gods or narrators are concerned, I think I'm a case of Borderline personality. I'll deeply invest myself in the task of helping one Sim through the travails of life and the duress of getting a decent job, and then I'll turn around and lock one of them into a one-room area and watch him/her die.

Before the series turned into a complete cash grab for EA, this was my premier destination for emergent storytelling.

Baldur's Gate: my first RPG ever, and the best one by far. It's funny, it's intense, it's scary, it's got the High Adventure and High Fantasy spirits going, it's even a little Pulp Era Fantasy-ish at times - it just ticks all the right boxes for me.

Plus, I just can't stop clicking on Xzar's portrait. "STOP TOUCHING MEEEEEEE!"

WarCraft II: Tides of Chaos: exploding sheep. See Xzar above. That is all. Oh - and the glory days of TCP-IP gaming. Nothing beats clogging up the family's phone lines for three hours because you're wanting to get some primitive Defense of the Ancients going against some kid from Chemistry class.

The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind: I've come to love Bethesda Softworks, but I also have a serious hate-on for them for how they made me skip class on occasion as well as for how they made me procrastinate for sometimes weeks on end because I *just* had to finish that one set of questlines and then I was done...

Thank you, Bethesda, and fuck you. Both at the same time, and from the bottom of my heart. This also applies to Oblivion and Skyrim.

Assassin's Creed: this one is special because I consider it to mark the beginning of my adulthood in the truest sense of the word. The year of its release marks my first job, it's my friend's first big gig as an animator, we splurged our first paychecks on it together and shared our first beers over it together. We tore open history books or Wikipedia pages while playing just to see who fit where in the grand scheme of things, and this marked the first time I'd have a very deep and profound respect for the inner workings of game design. It's also the first time that it would sink in that I'd probably never set a foot in that one industry's door - but that's okay.

Why is it okay? Because I consider myself as being already fortunate enough to live in a time where games have reached this deep a level of narrative and thematic complexity. The sequels only expanded on that as time went on, and I've been looking forward to each AssCreed release the way some drool when thinking of the next Clive Cussler.

 

[___________________]

1. Streets of Rage

2. Metal Gear Solid

3. Resident Evil 1

4. Final Fantasy VII

5. Tekken 3

There are more like Freelancer, Heavy Rain and stuff, but those 5 came first when it came to defining the way I like to play nowadays.

 

[Brendan Stepladder]

There's a lot more love for Halo in this thread than I would have expected. Also, significantly less Half-Life 2 than I would have anticipated from this community of Valve-sycophants.

 

[JasonBurnout16]

Hmmmmm.

1) Dino Crisis.

The first game I ever played, which I completed alongside my Uncle who has moved away. I have fond memories of the game and it will always have a place in my heart. It also birthed my admiration of dinosaurs.

2) Bioshock.

The game was simply a work of art and I fell so deep into the story with the whole Altruism/Objectivism. Very interesting.

3) Assassins Creed (2)

While the whole series has been amazing - and I'm planning on getting a tattoo of the logo - the second game onwards really stands out to me. I simply love Rome, Italy, the whole lot and again it's simply an amazing game.

4) COD4

Allowed me to play with my friends online, make new friends and generally have an amazing time, inside, away from the troubles of the rest of the world while still being with my friends? Yes please.

5) Minecraft.

It allows me to explore my creative side. Simple as that.

 

[jakel_hybrid]

Deus Ex: In my opinion one of the best games ever made. The complexity of almost every character, the choices you could make, the different ways you could play, the amazing storyline incorporating science fiction, gothic grandeur, philosophy and conspiracies. I have played through it so many times, and yet I will still find something new every time I play it.

Half Life 2: Fast paced shooter action, with strong characters and amazing story. What more could you want? Oh how about varied locations, weapons and enemies, amazing world building and the most physically true world in gaming.

Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast: This game was one of the first shooters I had ever played where the story was one of the central reasons for playing. If had plenty of characters, settings and objectives, and really got you caught up in the extended universe of Star Wars. Plus you could be a FUCKING JEDI. And because it was designed for PC, they could give you a whole bunch of powers without having to cycle through them, you just pressed the F keys.

Planescape Torment: One of the deepest and most amazing RPG experiences ever made. The story of redemption of a guy who was trying to do the right thing, but ended up basically fucking the multiverse through his attempts, is still on of the best I've ever played.

Starcraft: A deep, tactics driven multiplayer experience, coupled with an awesome singleplayer RTS. Yes please. Really introduced the RTS genre to me, and despite how many I've played, I don't think I've played any others as many times as the original and the best.

 

[Naeras]

Company of Heroes
The game that got me into the RTS genre, and also the game that made me realize that I'm actually a pretty darn good tactician. Which suits me well, because the game has a very tactical approach to the genre. As of now I'm a relatively well-known name in the CoH community, so you can say that I've spent more time on this game than any other when you factor in all my work on the forums and strategies.

Tales of Symphonia
Yeah, sure, it's a JRPG, but it's one of the better ones. It's also the first game I played that actually was about something(discrimination and social issues). The combat was also pretty good, and although the game really hasn't aged well, it still stood as my favorite game ever for five years.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Another game that's really about something, and it's about one of the themes I'm the most intrigued about(I'm a bio-science student), and had some goddamn gripping moments. It's also a prime example of how to do moral choices properly in a game, as several of the scenarios you're presented with have no simple answers. The gameplay is also really good for the most part.

Super Mario 64
My first game ever. Do I need to explain any more?

Street Fighter Alpha 3
SFA3 was the first fighting game I really loved. It's probably a huge part of what got me into the genre again recently, buying an arcade stick and all. It's kind of a cheesy 90's-game, but that's part of the charm. And while I do think Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike is a better game overall, SFA3 has a special place in my heart.