So yeah, after counting down the 20-11 parts of my Favourite Games list, here is the cream of the crop, the absolute favourite games of all time for me. Are you ready? Let's hit it off!
10 Bejeweled 3
The Bejeweled games to me are like a drug to me. You don't really need them but once in a while you get a craving for them and you just have to play it. I really love Bejeweled for the relaxing nature of it and just for the arcady feel of trying to beat your high score or get higher in the leaderboards. It really is a really well made puzzle game and easily my favourite of all time for a lot of reasons. Any game can last from 10 minutes to an hour and really depends on your luck and skill. One of the most satisfying things in the game is getting huge chain reactions and it's ALWAYS satisfying to mix two hypercubes together.
While the other Bejeweled games are fine in their own right I find Bejeweled 3 to be my fav, whether I play it on PC or Nintendo DS, because of the features and because it has something for everyone and for every mood I'm in. If I wanna relax I play Zen mode, if I want the classic experience I play classic mode. If I want something more tactical I play the Poker mode and the Quest mode is for when I'm feeling masochistic and really wanna challenge myself. Either way I highly recommend playing this game if you're into puzzle games although I must warn you, getting addicted is way too easy... ;)
09 SiN
There are some games that came out in the 90's that kinda fell under the shadow of bigger hits. A great example is SiN versus Half-Life. Personally I prefer SiN, and for a lot of reasons. The main reason is that while Half-Life IS a great game, I think SiN had a lot more personality to it. SiN takes cues from Duke Nukem 3D and in a lot of ways probably gave people a Duke Nukem Forever long before it came out. The hero is a macho beefcake who spends most of the game quipping one-liners and chatting with a sidekick on his ear and the banter between them is really believable and gives the whole game a buddy cop feeling and I really dug that back in the day as not many games did that, at least not in the FPS genre. It also did something that was pretty groundbreaking back then, you could actually use in-game computers and even hack into them DOS-style which was really cool back then and this was YEARS before Doom 3 did the interactive computer thing and not even to the same degree.
The game pits you against the beautiful but deadly Elexis Sinclaire who has created a drug called Vanity which turns people into horrible mutants, her plan being to take over the world (OF COURSE!) with these mutants and create a new world in which the strongest survive. Being the badass futurecop you are, you're sent to take this crazy lady down and kick some ass on the way, fighting your way not only through the grunts that follow her but also the deadly creations from her biolabs. The expansion pack Wages of SiN also even added the ability to dual-wield pistols and added a ton of great features and new content to the game, including a flashlight, and gave you a brand new story to play where you're sent to take down a mob boss and has little to do with the story from the first game, only losely tied to it. An episodic sequel, cleverly titled SiN Episodes was to be released around 2002-2003 but only one episode, Emergence was released before Ritual Entertainment was bought by a game company that specializes in casual games... Yeah, you can imagine it was a death sentence to the SiN games so sadly, we're not likely to see any new SiN games any time soon.
That being said, SiN is just an awesome shooter which sadly fell under the shadow of Half-Life when it came out and to me, it's just a better game. You can find it easily on Steam these days so finding it is not that hard and boxed copies are also easy to find on eBay. That being said the expansion Wages of SiN is NOT available on Steam and nor is it compatible with the Steam version so I highly recommend picking this up on eBay if you can.
08 Fallout 2
There was a reason I skipped classes for several weeks back in junior high school and that reason was Fallout 2. At that point I hadn't really played a game that was this hard to put down. This is arguably one of my favourite RPG's of all time and whenever I play it, it's very easy to see why. While Fallout 1 was a pretty good RPG that was unique when it came out, Fallout 2 just improves on everything and becomes a much more memorable game. It also has a lot of adult content and dark humor which I really dug and it really makes Fallout 3 seem like such a tame and not to mention disappointing sequel in comparison as while I enjoyed the first person view of Fallout 3, it just didn't offer the same experience. There was just so many references, so much to do and so much random stuff in Fallout 2 that I felt was missing in Fallout 3. Not even the guns felt as good in Fallout 3 and I really do prefer the turnbased combat over the real-time combat in FO3.
The game is a direct sequel to the first Fallout and you play as the descendant of the hero from the first game. Your mission is to find a G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) to save your village which isn't doing too well. Needless to say, being an enormous vast RPG, you have a lot to explore, tons of sidequests to do and can choose not to do the main quest at all, and the amount of freedom you have in this game is just amazing for the time. There is also a crazy amount of mods for this game to find online, just like with the sequels, and they do a lot of stuff from simply adding weapons, enhancing the graphics or even adding entirely new quests to do!
Needless to say with Fallout 2 you get a LOT for the money, and a completely unique experience, and a true classic in RPG history. I've spent god knows how many hours playing Fallout 2 and will probably spend more in the future, it really is an awesome RPG. You can easily find it too on both Steam and GOG.com and I originally played a copy that was bundled with a game magazine.
07 MDK
MDK is one of those games that really impressed the hell out of me back in the day. You play as an androgynous hero in a tight ass "coil" suit with several neat tricks, such as a deployable parachute and a revolutionairy sniper helmet, and it pretty much was the first shooter that I know of that implemented a sniper rifle or at least made it a popular weapon in shooters. Your mission is to destroy alien city-sized "minecrawlers" that are pretty much running over the planet and crushing anything in their path and consuming resources, especially potatoes for some odd reason. You get some help of course from a slightly mad scientist who invented your weapons and a six-legged robot dog named Bones (though he prefers the name Max).
It's just overall a really cool game and it does a really good job mixing humor and seriousness and it has a really dark and gothic look that I just dig the hell out of and it works really well with the limited 3D they had back then and it's aged really well. Not only did it look amazing for the time, it also has one of the best game soundtracks I've heard, done by the awesome Tommy Tallarico. It feels a lot like a third person Doom and that's just a great thing to me, though the controls do change a bit sometimes which can be a bit of an annoyance.
You can find it easily on Steam and GOG.com and I've even made a patch for the Steam version to make it more Steam compatible and bring back some missing content.
06 Duke Nukem 3D
If I had to say which game is my favourite from the 90's it would easily be Duke Nukem 3D, and while it is not my favourite game or my favourite Duke Nukem game even, it really is a great game and one I've played a lot and still play a lot. The fact that it has a ton of mods available and is even very easy to mod yourself gives it a really extended life and it really is an awesome shooter that really put Duke on the map and gave him the personality he has today thanks to Jon St Jon. Aside from that, it just has memorable boss fights, really good level design and while the graphics weren't that good for the time (Quake came out the same year), the amount of passion put into the game and just the personality of it makes it one of my favourite games easily, and I definitely prefer it to Doom or Quake.
The game is basically about the allaround badass Duke Nukem who has to save the world's women after an alien invasion that has killed off most of Earth's men and left the women to become enslaved by the aliens and used as incubators for their invasion. Needless to say this pisses Duke off and he goes off to kill the aliens once and for all.
The game is really easy to find, both on eBay, Steam and GOG.com and costs next to nothing these days so you really get a great game for the money. And just the amount of interactivity it has was groundbreaking back then.
05 Deus Ex
You know how when someone mentions Deus Ex, someone reinstalls it? That's not just something they say, that's true. And I am guilty of reinstalling it multiple times. And there's a good reason for it, this game is just really good and really fun to play and one of the games that got me interested in RPG's back in the day. It blends elements from adventure games, RPG's and first person shooters, and mixing elements of cyberpunk and conspiracy theories in order to create something really fresh and memorable and the gameplay elements makes this game really fun to just mess around with and play over and over because every time I play the game I discover something new and not a lot of games can say that.
Really great game, easy to find on Steam and GOG.com and not gonna set you back much. A true classic by every sense of the word.
04 Mass Effect Trilogy
It's really hard to say which of the Mass Effect games are my favourite so I'm just gonna say all 3 of them as I tend to see all of them as one game since they are meant to be played in succession and in my opinion, the games sort of compliment each other really well. The first game is more of a roleplaying experience and with a lot of inventory management, and honestly has the best story of the 3 games, the second game is more of an action/adventure experience and really plays more like a third person shooter. The third game feels like a mix between the first two games and also has a pretty decent multiplayer mode.
The games circle around Commander Shepard and his/her journey to save the galaxy from an ancient race of machines who are basically strong as gods and is in my opinion one of the most solid game trilogies out there, although not entirely without its flaws, and the ending to the third game continues to polarize critics and gamers alike. Still I've put so many hours into these games and really lived myself into them so much that I have to put them here on the list.
03 Unreal Tournament
What can you say about Unreal Tournament, it's just one of the best arena FPS's out there and has been since it came out. Just the amount of game modes, characters, guns and all around fun is huge in this game and while there is basically no story in the game, the focus isn't on the story, it's on the gameplay and to me, that's how all great games should be. Basically the game is a shooter in which the goal is to get the most kills and least deaths. Dead simple. Though there might always be additional goals depending on the game mode you choose. Team Deathmatch pits two opposing teams against each other, Capture The Flag does the same but each team guards a flag and the goal is to capture the opposing team's flag enough times to win the match. There are also more objective driven modes such as Assault where one team attacks the base while the other team defends it. The offensive team has to find a set amount of smaller objectives and complete them before the base can be overrun.
While Unreal Tournament 2004 and UT3 both are great sequels, you still can't beat the original imo, with its outstanding visuals that still hold up today and its awesome mod soundtrack composed by Alex Brandon who also worked on Deus Ex and Jazz Jackrabbit 2. One of my favourite things about UT is that it's highly modable and you can easily download additional characters and maps online to expand your experience and add a lot of additional custom content to it, and it's one of my staples in every LAN party I have as it runs really well on modern computers and whether played on PC or my Dreamcast, it is always a fun time and always a great party game.
02 Duke Nukem Forever
Yeah, I include both this, Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem 3D in the same list. I'm a huge Duke fan, so sue me! ;) I honestly don't get the hate and criticism people give this game. While I understand SOME of it, especially directed towards the console ports, I honestly don't understand most of it. I think the main problem people have with Duke Nukem Forever is that they take it way too seriously and honestly, that's sort of missing the point entirely. Both Duke Nukem 3D and Duke Nukem Forever are games that aren't meant to be taken seriously, pretty much the entire game is just made for fun and this goes through the entire design and gameplay.
That being said, this IS and always will be one of the most fun games I've played and I love every second of it. I still play it today and even recently completed it on the highest difficulty, and it's one of the few games I've done that on just because I am that dedicated to it. Duke Nukem Forever basically takes everything that made Duke Nukem 3D so great, the interactivity, the humor, the personality, the gameplay variety, pop culture references, and just amps it up to the nth degree.
I absolutely love the gameplay, the story, the graphics, the sound, everything is just solid. While there are some flaws about the game, especially the fact that the alien weapons just don't feel that satisfying and that there's a considerable lack of secrets, those are just really minor flaws and overall I love this game. There's just so much to do, so much detail and the humor is SPOT ON for Duke Nukem. Yeah it's immature and sometimes raunchy and makes you feel kinda dirty, but that's just the point of Duke Nukem. It's bad taste and revels in it and in result is one of the most unique shooters out there. I've never played anything like it and probably never will. I also have to mention that this game has something awesome that surprisingly few games have nowadays, at least on PC, a cheat mode! That's right, beat the game once and you can play around with various cheats such as infinite ammo, god mode, the original Duke 3D freezeray (bouncing projectiles instead of a constant stream), changing head sizes (basically the ol' bighead cheat) and playing the game mirrored or in black and white. Really, this is some of my favourite features of the game, just being able to dick around with the cheats to make the game even more fun to play when you just want to play for fun!
Strongly suggest you at least check out the free demo on Steam and decide for yourself what side of the fence you're on. I actually have a bit of a problem as whenever I see someone bashing the game I tend to get very defensive because I honestly love this game and think a LOT of people take it WAY too seriously and simply put, they just don't get it. It is by far one of my favourite games of all time and WOULD be my favourite game if it wasn't for the next game on my list...
01 Borderlands 2
I honestly don't know where to begin when it comes to Borderlands 2. I am a HUGE fan of the first game and it really was an awesome shooter that blended RPG elements with first person shooting to create a truly unique experience that was basically Diablo with guns. But it was so much more, it had humor, cartoony comic-book style graphics that was a huge contrast to the more realistic shooters of the time, it had memorable music and a Mad Max influenced vibe that I couldn't help but fall in love with. Then Borderlands 2 came out and boy, this is the PERFECT example of how you make a sequel. It takes EVERYTHING that made the first game great, taking the crazy gun combinations, the characters, the graphical style, the shoot'n'loot gameplay and just adding more story, more characters, the most memorable villain of all time for me with Handsome Jack, more guns, more loot and just making it a bigger and better game overall.
Borderlands 2 is a game that I just never get tired of. While the first game I easily get tired of and bored with, the second game I can play any time, any day, and never feel bored. There's constantly something there to draw me back, whether it's a new DLC, a new character to play, more rare guns to hunt for or just to live myself into that universe again and meet those crazy characters, laugh at the awesome dialogue, and just overall have a good fucking time. Borderlands 2 is a game that to me is flawless because no matter what flaws the game has, the reasons I find it awesome outweigh those flaws with such an amount that this is one of the few games that I feel deserves a true 10/10 score. I'm probably going to review it some day but I've been holding off because I find it hard to give this game a fair review since I am totally biased and consider this my favourite game of all time.
I keep playing it, I keep loving it, and probably will for years to come. It is simply an amazing game, and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who love shooters. You owe it to yourself to play this game at least once in your lifetime. The characters give options for ANY playstyle there is, whether you wanna be a sniper, an elemental DOT expert or a tank. It is also the perfect game to play with a party of close friends and to me, there's nothing better than a game you can play with friends and that even is BETTER in multiplayer!
Should also be noted that Borderlands 2 is one of the few, if not the ONLY sequel I know that retroactively makes the first game even more fun to play as it expands on the characters from the first game and gives them way more character development and also makes the story from the first game more interesting since it builds on it. I just don't know any game sequel at the top of my head who does this as well as Borderlands 2 does. So yeah, that's why Borderlands 2 is my favourite game of all time.
At this point it is the game on my list that I have put the most amount of hours into on Steam with a staggering 442 hours and counting and that should indicate just how much I adore this game. I'm not gonna spoil too much of the game but let me just say that it is amazing and the story is one of the best I've seen in a game. It is dead simple but that's why it's so awesome. And the fact they keep releasing more and more content for the game is just amazing as I really love the stuff they keep giving us and keeping us playing the game.
It combines everything I love in games. Guns, roleplaying, sci-fi elements, humor, good music and atmosphere and characters you just can't help but fall in love with and that are so memorable they become part of your life. And honestly, to me that is what makes this game perfect in my eyes and why I keep playing it. What more can you ask for?
I can see myself playing this game for years to come which is not something I say easily about games these days but any game on this list are games I have played for a long time and will continue playing into the future, no matter what games come out. ;)
- Alyxx
