The Five games that define you as a gamer

[God'sFist]

5.fable 2
first game I got for my 360. I just love black and white choices they are fun.
4.fable 1
had this on the original xbox and gave me my first major boss fights.
3.age of empires
I played this on the computer when i was in grade school just brings back good memories
2. KOTOR 1
loved the story litteraly got schlorped into it.
1. KOTOR 2
Great story, great play, and gave me the power to be a jedi master or sith lord. the best part I chose what the destiny of the character was just awesome.

Top five games for me

 

[Brixton6]

Pokemon (Yellow, Gold, Ruby, and Emerald to be specific)(GB/GBA)
Pokemon is definitely the game that defined my childhood. I would carry my Pokemon themed Gameboy Color with me wherever I went. I believe I can point to Pokemon as the reason why I love RPGs. I can't even imagine how many hours I put into those games. It certainly surpasses any play time I have with games nowadays.

Duck Hunt (NES)
Duck Hunt is the first console game I remember playing. It was bundled with Super Mario Bros, but I don't remember ever getting past the first couple levels of the first world in that. Duck Hunt, on the other hand, was incredible. Shooting those pixels with the infrared gun and hearing the ducks thud on the ground was so unbelievably satisfying.

Time Splitters 2 (Game Cube)
This was the first FPS I played. I still have fond memories of long nights shooting up bots as Captain Snow or Captain Forest. To this day I haven't finished the story mode. I've tried going back a few times to beat it, but it's never as fun as multiplayer for some reason.

Halo 1 (PC)
This is really the first PC game I played extensively. I never owned an Xbox and I didn't realize it was available for PC, so it wasn't until well after Halo 2 was released that I picked this one up. After I did though, I really got into it. Plus, the free online multiplayer was tons of fun. Looking up Halo 1 trick videos that I could recreate is what lead me to Red vs. Blue and Roosterteeth.

TES IV: Oblivion (PC)
I really wasn't interested in Oblivion for the longest time. One of my friends showed it to me once but I thought it looked fairly bland. Then my sister's fiancee was talking it up pretty big and convinced me to go halfsies on an Oblivion/Bioshock bundle that was at Wal-Mart (I got Oblivion, he got Bioshock). I popped that disk into the drive and just couldn't stop playing. And the mods. Ooohhh the mods....

This list was actually much harder to write up than I thought it would be.

EDIT: Shoutout to Runescape for being a time sink and Assassin's Creed for getting me into the runny, jumpy, stabby genre of games (Prince of Persia, in particular)

 

[poundingmetal74]

Worms World Party (Great casual game. Always loved the worms series)
Goldeneye (For me this is still the pinultimate shooter. Many a weekend were spent with my neighbours and friends playing this)
Final Fantasy IV (This and 6 I've played every single North American port of. Love the classic FF series).
Carmageddon 2 (Great driving game).
Wayne Gretzky 3D hockey (I've spent a lot of time playing various NHL games, this one still remains one of my favourites).

 

[Okamiyasha]

Halo Combat Evolved
Assassin's Creed (1)
Fallout 3
COD4: Modern Warfare
Demon's Souls

They be mine. I shall also explaineth at a later date.

 

[Mr.Pandah]

No order. These games all bring me to a different place. As in, a childhood wonderment. Words can't explain, but you know that feeling.

1) UN Squadron - This game really just cemented my need for difficult games and customization. I love this game so much.

2) Super Mario RPG:Legend of the Seven Stars - My favorite game of all time. Easily. I play this game annually just to remind myself of how amazing it is.

3) Godhand - Odd game to throw on here, but it's just such a satisfying game to play. I can't get enough of it.

4) DotA - My friends and I have been playing this game for literally years. It's kept us together in a way that I don't really think anything else ever would. I keep in touch with my friends through games since I live so far away, and this really just helps immensely.

5) I was going to say I don't have one that I can think of, but...

Legend of Zelda:Ocarina of Time - Yes, I had to have this one. Super Mario 64 showed me what 3D worlds were about, this game gave me a reason to enjoy them. It ushered in an entire new gaming dimension for myself and many others. I still enjoy this game to this day.

 

[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

 

[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.