Gush / Video Games: A to F

A

• Alan Wake is one of the most original games I have played in a while. One of the really good things about it is that the well-written story is always happening. Thanks to its TV series setup, each level has its own little mini-story, ensuring that something is always going on. The landscapes are breathtaking and accurate, and you frequently see your goal in the distance, and think, "I've got to go there? This is going to take forever!" and then you suddenly realize, "Wow, I'm there." without any loading screens. It's fun to have a Third-Person Shooter that doesn't rely on cover, and while you do the same thing over and over, it never feels repetitive. It'll occasionally throw you a gameplay change, such as fleeing from cops without weapons. The atmosphere is solid, giving decent scares without blood and guts. And finally, what other game (besides Left 4 Dead 2) has you defending a concert stage, with pyrotechnics being viable weapons, in a setpiece that's so awesome that even the characters have to comment on its awesomeness? And "Children of the Elder God" is an amazing song.
• Alien: Isolation Alien Isolation is a underrated survival horror game which I highly recommend, it's set after the events of the original Alien and has the player control Amanda Ripley as she attempts to survive on a derelict space station while she's being hunted by the titular xenomorph.
• Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I, who am fairly hardened when it comes to Surv-Horror games, had to take a half-hour break after the infamous water section.
• Anti-Idle: The Game. An in-depth Idle Game with many, many things to do to boost progress, such as arcade-style games, a Collectible Card Game, and a Role-Playing Game. And it has a dedicated developer and player base, continuing to be played and updated even after six years. All this in a Flash game you can play on Kongregate. Start it up and go kick some triangle butt!
• I put forward the criminally under-rated RPG Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura. Detailed world, fantastic story, fascinating characters. I love it and you all should too. Oh, and it still has a marginally active community.
  • Someone else knows about this game? I'm in love. I got this game as a birthday gift instead of Diablo II. I did not regret it at all. Amazing characters, an interesting story and a character building system that let you play how you wanted. Ridiculously under-rated.
• Where the heck is Armored Core: Master of Arena!? You have many Ravens to fight, all ruthless and hell bent on killing you, Customization for your mech, as with the satisifaction of winning every single Arena and Killing Nine-Ball. It is the greatest Mech Game I have played.
  • Hear, hear. I was a big fan of the PS1 era Armored Core games, but feel they are surpassed by Armored Core 3 and Silent Line. While the series hit a bit of a roadbump with Armored Core 2 and Another Age, it more then made up for it with Armored Core 3 and Silent Line. Armored Core 3 took the best aspects of previous Armored Core games and combined them with the PS2's superior power which made it better then Armored Core 2 and Another Age by leaps and bounds. While Silent Line, besides the graphics, was even better in every respect, with a staggering number of parts, a highly diverse set of missions, and reintroduced two-on-two and custom AI arena modes. While the rest of the AC games for the PS2 didn't nearly match up (Ninebreaker probably being the weakest overall), I still have a soft spot for Last Raven for its sheer difficulty compared to the rest of the series (being that it's possible to fight an AC for every mission during the single player campaign) which makes truly becoming the "last raven" feel like a real accomplishment amidst the apocalyptic setting that brings the PS2 AC era to a conclusion.
  • Armored Core 4 is, and will be until the day I die, my favorite game, EVER. Armored Core: For Answer was almost as good, but it didn't have quite the same feel to it that AC4 did. Complain as much as you like about its Real Is Brown graphics, but I found that they suited the game perfectly I also spent hours upon hours just messing around on the missions, thinking quietly to myself. I personally found it to be on of the greatest, most (both graphically and setting-wise) beautiful games I've ever played.
• Personally? I'm extremely fond of an entirely-forgotten SNES game, Ardy Lightfoot. Despite the unmoving backgrounds causing some confusion at points, the title character always had a cute, scruffy charm to him, Pec was just adorable (and deadly...), and the gameplay was awesomely fun. The story didn't always make sense, but to me, anything else can be excused solely on the merit of its soundtrack. Go play it.
• Ar nosurge is a cookie-cutter game with heavily reused assets. Its graphics are mediocre at best. The dungeons offer nothing to explore, and the combat offers little challenge. But despite the budget constraints that it has, Gust has managed to create a story that delivers so much on character development, world-building and player involvement that playing it gives you a feeling of immersion like no other game could give. The JRPG sensibilities and cliches may put some people off, but it really does have its moments. Like that part where Delta complains directly to the camera, i.e. to the player, demanding the player to return the control over his body.
• Assassin's Creed was both one of the most frustrating and one of the most mindblowing games I've ever played. Even with the repetitive combat and the stupid flaghunt minigame and the non-ending, the story (including the framing story) and the core gameplay mechanics were so well-thought-out, so clever, and so much fun that they made up for it — and that's without mentioning the sheer beauty of the game, or the innovative setting. Not many games are set in the real world's past, and Assassin's Creed made me wonder why — climbing a building to get a proper view of the gorgeous scenery surrounding you gives you an extra kick when you realize that the building you're climbing is the al-Aqsa Mosque.
  • And for those who gave up because of the repetitiveness and ambiguity of the first game: the sequel is one of the very few cases in video game history where the developers managed to keep everything that was great about the original game (parkouring and climbing over real-world cities), discarded that which didn't work (collection sidequests with no rewards, repetitive missions), and expanded upon the experience with new features (the economy/villa-building sidequest, inventory management, tombs and catacombs). Assassin's Creed II sets the bar for what a sequel should aspire to, and it deserves several accolades for stepping out of the long shadow cast by its predecessor's flaws and rising on its own to become a well-made game in its own right.
  • Plus, it's extremely awesome to leap off a rooftop and simultaneously stab two fully-armored guards in the face.
    • Not to mention cathartic.
• Hear now the tale of Atelier Series, a video game series focusing solely on the art of item crafting. Americans didn't get the series until the Atelier Iris games came out, but those who have played any game in the series can find something to like about it. It's unfortunately a rather niche game series that seriously Needs More Love, as the gameplay is fun and addictive, the characters are all amazing and well-rounded—save for a select few in each game—the artwork is beautiful, the stories are charming and fun. Special mention goes to my two personal favorites, Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky and Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, the former for having a likeable cast and a fun battle system, the latter for its addictive gameplay, fun use of alchemy, and the amazing story that gradually gets deeper and more layered with each chapter. Seriously, if you want to play a game series that's fun and light-hearted and is just plain sweet, take a chance on an Atelier game!
• Audiosurf and its sequel superbly fuse the Rhythm Game and Puzzle Game genres with an added bonus: you can use any song in the world on it. You'll get a great challenge playing Aphex Twin or any Drum and Bass song on it. It's a game any music fan can enjoy.
• Axelay. It combines the best things about the 16-bit era into a Crowning Game of Awesome. It's a visual showpiece, and a treat to listen to, especially if you like jazz. (Yes, jazz in a shmup.) Case in point: Stage 2. You start by flying into a space station from space. The whole station rotates, and at one point, you can see your home planet, poking through an opening in the walls. Then it goes away. All the while, a piece of music fit for a Determinator swells in the background, building to the point where you see the planet in the background. Finally, you reach a part of the space station that appears torn and blasted apart. Then the music changes to a panicky electronic beat. At the end of the tunnel is a Humongous Mecha, with a distinct Robocop style, and gorgeously rendered. As the fight continues, the music from the first part of the stage breaks out of the beat, and the robot starts using a big charging crush laser. Now imagine this, plus five other stages of SNES shmup glory. Words cannot describe how great this game is.

B

• Banjo-Kazooie took what Super Mario 64 invented for 3D platforming and perfected it. I've never played a better game in my life. The worlds were beautiful and imaginative, the characters were funny, and the gameplay was easy yet magically fun.
  • Its sequel Banjo-Tooie is just about as much fun with bigger levels, better moves and more transformations. Plus you can turn Kazooie into a dragon!
    • Even the smaller GBA game Grunty's Revenge was decent. With a lineup like this I can't imagine Nuts and Bolts being as bad as Fan Dumb makes it.
    • It's not. It's different, sure. But the game has an absolutely brilliant sense of humor, poking fun at just about every single videogame trope ever, and the vehicle-creation system truly encourages you to think out of the box. The game asks a lot of its audience, and because of that audacity, too many people dismissed it out of hand, which is a bloody shame. If you approach the game with a creative mind, if you're willing to break the rules, and if you're willing to stomp on the competition with a Dakka-loaded Humongous Mecha, Nuts & Bolts is a bloody fantastic game.
• Paging Doctor Bats... Paging Doctor Bats... IS THERE A DOCTOR BATS IN THE ROOM???
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum will forever be remembered as the game that broke the notion that licensed games have to suck (it's been confirmed by Guinness World Records, really!): it's an incredibly well-made, atmospheric dive into the world of Batman; it boasts a fun-and-easy-to-execute-yet-still-awesomely-flashy combat system that flows extremely well; you've got tons of Batman's infamous gadgets and techniques at your disposal, and they make you exercise your mind and study the scene the way Batman does; and that's not even mentioning all the fanservice and Fandom Rejoicing Triggers they whipped out, like Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and the Joker, plus all the bonus material that delves into the characters and history of Batman. I wasn't even a major Batman fan, I just liked The Dark Knight Trilogy along with everyone else - but this game has converted me!
    • TL;DR version: You. Get. To be. BATMAN!
  • Batman: Arkham City actually manages to outdo its predecessor in almost every way and take the throne as the greatest superhero game of all time. It's got a complex and really enjoyable story (sometimes a little overly crowded but it works), spectacular design, loads of side missions and Riddler puzzles, brilliant gameplay that expands on the original in every aspect, great music, and incredible voice acting across the board. I expected a great game. What I did not expect was one of the finest action/adventure games ever made.
    • Batman: Arkham Knight: The Batmobile is this for a portion of the fanbase. It can drive like a rocket-propelled tank, be nimble enough to stealth attack large tanks, provide an assist for a combo during combat, use the winch to drive up buildings and of course as a basic traversal tool whose ejector seat launches Batman into the air like a cannonball allowing him to glide at great heights across great distances. As pointed out by one reviewer its every videogame vehicle ever made rolled into one.
• Battlefield Heroes is great fun. What other game lets you snipe people from a plane, run people over with a jeep and wear a King Cobra on your shoulder, all in the same game? It deserves more popularity. The battles are perfectly-paced, lasting reasonably long without dragging on forever. Having a customizable hero is always great, too. And the theme is incredibly catchy without being annoying!
• Bayonetta. I have no doubt that the only reason this game wasn't already here is the fact that everyone else who has a copy (at least of the 360 version) is too distracted to post it. It is, though, the distillation of an action game, then turned up to 11. There is nothing that it doesn't do in excess to the point of parody, from violence (such as beating a boss just to summon a giant demon made of hair to eat it), to violation of physics (Yay for treating walls as floors as a common game mechanic, and things like the sequence where you ride a motorcycle up the side of a skyscraper-turned-rocket as it exits the Earth's atmosphere, even jumping between the stages as they separate), to fanservice (really, in that regard, the game footage speaks for itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NaUVRwAky4 ). Add to that a pretty cool (if slightly repetitive) soundtrack, and you get an awesome game which never takes itself particularly seriously, and is tons of fun to play.
  • Bayonetta is, in my opinion, the best action game of all time and one of the best games I have ever played in my life. It's no wonder it received so much critical acclaim and positive fan reception. It not only managed to surpass its predecessors and take the crown, but it raised the standard for what an action game can and should be. First, it has great enemy staggering and knockback, a must-have of any good action game. The levels, though linear (which is expected in a pure action game), are very well-designed, and give a great sense of Serial Escalation as the game goes on. Then there are the incredible bosses,ranging from the giant two-headed dragon Fortitudo to the human-sized Jeanne, as well a fantastic secret boss Father Rodin. They all manage to be very challenging and yet fun. There's fighting on walls and ceilings. Finally, there are the weapons, which of course are the high point of the game. By having switching weapons on the hands and feet as well as other gameplay mechanics, there are an incredible number of combos able to be done, more than any other game, other than its sequel. For these reasons and much, much more, Bayonetta stands out as the queen of action games.
• Who would have thought that a game as simple as Beat Hazard would be so fun and addictive! You can take any music that you want to play and rave out to the beat while shooting up all sorts of space ships! The controls are so simple to pickup and play, the gameplay can be hectic or simplistic as you want it to be, all while enjoying your tunes! Don't feel like shooting things but like the trippy light show of the game? You can put the game into Chill Out mode and you can play your music in Beat Hazard without picking up the controller (or keyboard)! You don't have to enjoy this gem alone; you and a buddy can team in co-op or go head-to-head and score the most points. This game is all around fun for everyone (who are not epileptic) in the simplest form!
• beatmania, including its More Popular Spin-Off beatmania IIDX. Diverse range of music from an ever-rotating lineup of in-house and commissioned musicians, simple yet demanding, challenging gameplay with charts that take years of dedicated play to master, and continues to have an active player base and new versions almost twenty years later. Yes, the core gameplay—a half-octave of keys and a turntable with notes scrolling in separate columns per key—has largely stayed the same for that long, but hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
• No mention of Betrayal at Krondor? 'Tis a crime! The game is awesome. The graphics are immersive and functional despite their age. The characters make you care about what happen to them, the characterization is built up subtly and gradually. Gorath is quite simply the coolest dark elf in the history of fiction, EVER. You come to cherish every little detail that's revealed about the world. And, gods, the ending. It may not be a happy ending, per se. But it's a true ending. That's how it often is in life, and coming to realize that, you'll be able to cherish everything so much more while it lasts.
• There's a damn good reason I Entry Pimp Beyond Good & Evil—it's frickin' amazing, and, like Psychonauts, is one of the best games never played. On a technical level, it's a really fun, heavily experimental, and really short, Action-Adventure game—but it's all the details that wowed her. Each NPC being completely unique. The really real Latin creature names. The epic soundtrack. And the characters! The three main characters are wonderfully realized, with fantastic, unique, likeable personalities. Their relationships are excellently written, too—the love between Jade and Pey'j doesn't need to be an Informed Attribute; it's undeniable and obvious yet never Anvilicious. And the growth of friendship and trust between Jade and Double H is organic and touching, culminating in the tear-jerking Take My Hand! and "lighthouse" scenes.
• BioShock
  • BioShock: No other game so perfectly balanced gameplay and story, and the whole thing is just so well presented. The beautiful character design. The amazing twists. The wonderful dialogue. The brilliant subversion of mindlessly following orders in videogames. The most Magnificent Bastard ever, in Andrew Ryan. And the most philosophically relevant game I have ever played. All together now: "A MAN CHOOSES! A SLAVE OBEYS!"
  • BioShock is diabolically creepy fun, and looks and sounds sumptuous to boot. And the good ending is nothing short of heartbreakingly beautiful.
  • BioShock 2 is better than its predecessor in every area. Better characters, better ending, better storyline, dialogue that's just as quotable as BioShock 1, if not more so (But the parasites say no!), better graphics, more choice, better gameplay (Incinerate 3 + Machine Gun + Armor-Piercing Rounds = I CAN TAKE ANYTHING YOU CAN THROW AT ME, LAMB, BRING IT THE FUCK ON), and to top it all off, the multiplayer. Jesus Christ, the multiplayer. There were so many different ways they could have gotten it wrong, and 2K avoided all of them, and made a multiplayer experience that works just as well as the single player campaign. There is only one complaint I have with it, and that's that it seems much shorter than the first game. Buy. This. Game.
    • While I don't agree it's better in every way, it still has a lot going for it. Aside from the lack of the "splash of water on the face" kind of story twist, to does have twists just not as strong as the first, it does still manage to hold a strong, if slightly tacked on, story that manages to remain faithful to the mood of the first, if not the grandeur, and the gameplay is by far the strongest point, but with a strong enough story and good enough prompting that you really feel like your revisiting the place through a different set of eyes, and makes it the place you remember, but different all the same.
  • BioShock Infinite may be the best one out of the series yet and undoubtedly one of the best games of 2013 so far. The story is filled with all the mystery and creepy wonder from the first one and Booker and Elizabeth's relationship manages to perfectly carry the game, as they are both interesting, likable protagonists. It's a greatly balanced and engaging FPS worthy of the BioShock name.
    • It has Columbia, the best Scenery Porn-laden Crapsaccharine World you'll ever see. And the protagonists, yeah... prepare for the feels in the Bad Future and, especially, in the ending. This game will stay with me a long time.
• The Bit Trip Series for WiiWare. These gems combine wonderful retro-styled visuals, catchy music and stupidly addictive points-based rhythm-action game play. Buy any one of these games and you won't need another game for months. They may be Nintendo Hard, but the feeling of pure accomplishment you get when you master them is the pinnacle of gaming for me.
• BlazBlue is not just a good fighting game. IT'S AWESOMENESS INCARNATE and everything in the game just OOZES STYLE. No main character plays the same as another, everyone has their own unique abilities and the designs in this game are nothing short of excellent—even the menus are a gorgeous sight to behold. Let's not forget the rockin' soundtrack and surprisingly good dub as well as storyline. And the Teach Me Ms. Litchi! segments are pure comedy gold. The Wheel Of Fate Is Turning...
• I was quite surprised to see a lack of Bloodborne admiration here. Well, for me, this game is one of my absolute favorites! Its gorgeous environments, Awesome Music, fun gameplay, and unique storytelling easily makes it one of the best damn games ever made imo. It's a real shame Sony refuses to port it to PC. I wouldn't call it underrated, since everyone one who's played this game seems to like it to a degree from what I've seen, but I hope more people get into it.
• I will likely be killed for saying it, but "bob's game". The game AND the forums (which count as the Third Game, which is the site) With the game's dark humor, fun minigames, and Awesome Music, and the forum's lack of rabid fans and general niceness, it's hard not to like it, unless you were fooled by the viral and STILL hate Robert for some reason.
• I'm going to say this out loud. I. Love. Borderlands. You can say what you want about the plot but everything else is absolutely perfect. Perfect controls. Perfect gameplay. Perfect RPG Elements, for Christ's sake! Gearbox have taken everything good about an FPS and transferred it into this game. And the thing I love most? The thing that I absolutely adore about Borderlands? It has a sense of what is fucking fun. FPS's today (I'm looking at you, Modern Warfare) have gotten far too caught up in making things gritty and realistic, well let me put this in ways you can understand, Infinity Ward. FUCK. THAT. SHIT. When I play an FPS, I don't want it to simulate realistic combat! That's just boring. I. Want. To. Have. A. Revolver. That. Shoots. Alternating. Elemental. Effects. On. Each. Bullet. Terrorist plot? FIRELIGHTNINGACIDEXPLOSION, MOTHERFUCKERS! I want a reference to nearly every work of note in the last hundred years, all with quests and red text! I want to have a person over my intercom, not shouting "Ramirez! Take down that AC-130 with your knife!", but instead informing me that "SWEET JEESUS TITTY CINNAMON THAT IS A MAWN-STER! THIS IS GON' BE SWEET!". I want to be informed by the final boss of the next DLC via Twitter that my player character should "Dude, eat something." I want a game that, specifically, does not feel like a chore to play. And I think that every single game developer out there can learn something from gearbox: Realism does NOT always equal fun. Also, POP CULTURE REFERENCES!
  • Even when Gearbox does go to the realistic side of the spectrum, they're still amazing. The Brothers in Arms series is mentally taxing to play, because it puts you right in the action, makes you care about the characters, and provides the most realistic combat I've ever seen in a video game. No Call of Duty run-and-gun tactics here, just use your cover and find, fix, flank, and finish. The storylines and characterization is simply stunning, too.
  • In all fairness to Modern Warfare, it's not nearly as realistic as the mainstream media wants you to believe. Its tactical FPS fore bearers - like the original Rainbow Six, Delta Force and Ghost Recon games; all of those series' first installments released before the PS2 era - slanted much further in realism than any of the Modern Warfare games. In fact, a late 2011 issue of Game Informer brought up several realistic PC FPS games as an antithesis to Modern Warfare 3, just to dismantle this myth. Hell, even Counter-Strike has more realism than Modern Warfare, and no one mistook that game as anything beyond a more arcadey Rainbow Six. Modern Warfare is more Mis-blamed than anything, thanks to its popularity pigeonholing it into Trope Codifier territory for gritty, realistic FPS games, even though this clearly isn't true. Sure, the Modern Warfare series has plenty of legitimate faults, but being too realistic ain't one of them.
  • Take everything you love about Borderlands and put it into Borderlands 2... and then some. The game has all of the above, but improves upon it. It adds new guns, adds explosive rounds and guns that are so batshit crazy that reality would balk at the thought of making them. And as if that weren't enough, they added a hell of a story, with great voice acting, fantastic and hilarious writing, and some genuinely touching or shocking moments. Handsome Jack is an awesome villain, who balances being a horrifying douchebag and a hilariously smug slaglick while being a Classic Villain at the same time! Add the refinement and bigger palette of the art style, the even bigger bosses, and a lot of fun side-missions, 6 amazing characters with great personalities, a beautiful environment and you get a sequel that does what a sequel should do; fix the criticisms of the last game.
  • Borderlands is the only game series that has convinced me that revolvers are indeed just better. Special mention goes to an Unforgiven Masher on Mordy or Maggie on Zero, which becomes a damage-dishing, enemy-smashing, robot-annihilating cannon/.50 cal machine gun of death with the right skills.
• Braid is absolutely amazing. The innovation in game mechanics is... dare I say it... equal to Portal. It makes you think, and it makes you feel like a total genius (or a total idiot) when you finally figure out the puzzles. The world needs more games like this.
  • The final level of the game, World 1-1 or "Braid," is one of the most mind-blowing moments I've ever experienced in video games, without even getting into all of the implications and undertones involved. The entire time I held the rewind button, realizing that that was actually making time go forward and the princess was running away from Tim, I was thinking "oh my god, this is insane. What is going on? I know what's going on, but what is going on?!" Whatever the size of his ego, kudos to Jonathan Blow for creating such a powerful moment in video gaming.
• BRICKS by Andreas Rottler. Best. Klotski. Clone. Ever.
• The Burnout series (3 and Dominator, in particular) is perfect for taking your road rage out in.
  • Burnout Paradise. Fantastic soundtrack, great visuals, a huge city and surrounding environs to explore (with seemingly endless amounts of hidden stuff to discover), races where you're free to choose your own way, very fun gameplay with countless opportunities to pull off jaw-dropping stunts, and DJ Atomika's cheesy but likeable chatter. With numerous memorable landmarks, Paradise City exhibits a great sense of place and starts to feel like home the more you play. There are few things more exhilarating than racing down the twisting streets with boost fully activated, brushing against passing traffic, with music blaring in the headphones.

C

• Call of Duty: Finest Hour is a masterpiece in my eyes. Sure, the graphics are mediocre, but the animations, especially the death animations, are awesome and well thought out. The game is probably the most challenging of the series, as even though previous games still used a Heath bar, in this game it is the most limited (a single burst of MG42 fire can kill you). Levels are not very linear, there is a lot of room for flexibility, and most importantly, no stupid "story elements". Sure, you may be given a cutscene at the beginning to establish the setting, but there are few times where you are interrupted during a mission.
  
  There are no Quick Time Events or anything of that sort. The game immerses you not by cramming the story down your throat until you gag, it immerses you by actually letting you PLAY the game instead of watching an interactive movie.
  
  A lot of people ragged on it for having inferior graphics in the Xbox, but if you ask me that's just petty. Judging games on graphics and not gameplay is something I hate with a passion and unfortunately seems to be in the rise nowadays. What I am trying to say is that this game got too much flak for no good reasons.
• I find Call of Duty: World At War underrated... some sections aren't that great but there are some scenes in that game that are just awe-inspiring. The others are good, too - but WAW is my favorite. (Keep in mind that I'm talking about the campaigns, as online games with constant battling bore me - not that I'm knocking those, I just don't enjoy them - but that's neither here or there.)
• Cave Story proves that some of the best video games are free. Plus, you have to admire the five years of effort put into it and its development team consisting of just one person.
  • Indeed. In fact, allow me to elaborate: Cave Story has the best stage design in a Metroidvania game ever, bar none. The feeling is not that you progress in the game, but that the game flows around you when you move. The music is about the pinnacle of 8-bit tunes - as was said in the Awesome Music article, if you don't like the Outer Walls tune (Moonsong is its title), you should visit your local priest, because you're suffering from a serious lack of soul. And the characters are just awesome. HUZZAH!
  • You said it! Cave Story really stands alone as one of the most memorable and polished indie games.
  • Cave Story Plus is one of the greatest purchases I've ever made on Steam. I loved it from beginning to end. The throwback to 8-bit platformers (with a little inspiration from Metroid as well), the story, the characters, the music, the fact that it was really hard even on the easiest difficulty, there's so many great things about it.
• Another example of awesome freeware: Cho Ren Sha 68K, a scrolling shooter originally developed for the Sharp X68000 computer. Barring the same background used for every stage (save for Stage 0), the game combines tense wave-based enemy action with some elements of Bullet Hell and has an absolutely killer soundtrack. Sadly, his new, piece-of-crap computer can't run it at full speed.
• Do you like Super Sentai and Power Rangers? Then you will love Chroma Squad, a tactical RPG and business sim where you can form your own team of colorfully costumed superheroes, customize them, and have them film episodes/square off against the forces of evil in tense turn-based battles.
• I wish more people know about and play City of Heroes. The character creator alone is worth the subscription fee.
  • Agreed. The only thing that would make it better is if they included options for Magical Girl costumes... what? I want my poofy dresses.
  • Thirded to the ultimate power. Even though I had to stop at some points, and at times even went to The Dark Side (i.e., World of Warcraft), I've always come back to this game. The recent sale of the IP to NC Soft seems to have made the game even better, in that the devs are finally focusing on making a game that is just plain fun!
    • Hell, use the forums. The devs themselves are pretty awesome to begin with. I still remember when Positron and Cuppajo showed up in-game to a mock wedding ceremony for two people getting married in real life.
  • The world is relatively small, compared to some other MMOs, and the chat and search interfaces aren't terribly complex. Add the relatively low penalty for dying and the aforementioned costume generator, and you have an MMO that (aside from the occasional user conflicts) makes teaming not just rewarding, but easy.
  • Fifthed (?), CoH is an amazing game with lore that stretches back thousands of years and over multiple realities (and just keeps growing), continually compounding customization (See what I did there?), a dedicated (and friendly) staff of devs, and the ability to team and solo with ease. I wouldn't trade this game for anything.
  • Sixed! It was an amazing game, and the sheer impact of the game (which is literally as old as World of Warcraft), if only NCsoft didn't have to kill it, it's a truely inspiring game, and the mere existence of City of Titans shows how much of a mark it left on the world.
• Civilization IV. Only three words are needed: ONE MORE TURN!
  • Tell me about it. I started playing on a Sunday morning and the next thing I knew, the sun was up and it was time to go to work!
  • How about Civilization V? I know a lot of people bitch about it, but I can't think of any other game I've played where I log in for a few minutes, then finally log off about half an hour after I'm normally in bed.
• Command & Conquer is my Most Triumphant Example of RTS, with a kick-ass soundtrack to boot. And Red Alert is even better, taking everything good about the original, turning it up to eleven and adding magnificent amounts of Large Ham-osity. And don't even get me started on Kane...
• When I played Company of Heroes, I felt like it was a completely different game from the Age of Empires series and Age of Mythology RTS games that I played (I still love em') and it completely blew my mind. It felt realistic (in retrospect it technically just felt realistic, there was much about it that wasn't - it still does remain that way in feeling to me, however), which was a big jump from the aforementioned Age of-s I played. I'd feel the same about Dawn of War 2 with it being similar to Company of Heroes Recycled In Space (or, you know, Warhammer 40,000. I like Warhammer 40,000's setting.), aside from Games For Windows Live disconnecting my Xbox Live Silver account all the time in multiplayer and some balance problems that are being ironed out.
• I am a huge Crash Bandicoot fan, and not only do I love all of Naughty Dog's originals, I also love Traveller's Tales' Crash Twinsanity and Radical Entertainment's current line of games, which, although very different in style and gameplay, are very fun to play and brought the series back to just Crash fighting evil scientists and mutants in his islands.
  • I would like to add that Crash Team Racing was just as good as Mario Kart, if not 500 times better.
  • Oh God, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped...
  • Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy...need I say more? The first three Crash games, given a graphical update with all of the levels from their respective games lovingly recreated to the core, all of the games getting optional Time Trials with their own Sapphire, Gold, and Platinum Relics, the option to play as Coco in any level that isn't a ride or boss level, Dummied Out levels like "Stormy Ascent" as Downloadable Content, and above all, good, fluid control that takes some time to get used to if you played the originals first but otherwise aren't that bad? Oh yeah, and these games still like to kick you in the balls and remind you that you're playing the first three games. There's no better time to be a Crash Bandicoot fan.
  • I know it's kind of a Contested Sequel and it's perfectly valid if you don't like it, but Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time was such a great and enjoyable experience that I didn't really care about some of its flaws. It's the classic Crash formula, but made much cooler with the new technology, it looks absolutely amazing (the level "Off Beat" is a great example of that), three new characters to play as, one of them being the fan-favorite Dingodile, a pretty fun story, a lot of nods and references at past games while still having a lot of new and unique things to bring to the table, all five of the bosses are amazing in their own right and the Quantum Masks provide some fun yet challenging gameplay challenges while also being pretty likable as characters. Yes, the 100% completion requirements are kinda ridiculous, especially since the game is pretty hard enough as it is, but I like how unlike in Crash 2 or Crash 3, you get a satisfying ending where the bad guy loses regardless, so it doesn't feel like it's forcing you to do it, so I don't mind.
• Crimzon Clover is by far the best shmup since sliced DoDonPachi. And that's saying something, considering it's doujin—developed for 5 years mainly by one person, with a little outside assistance and another person doing the music. As for the game itself, it puts as much emphasis on destruction as it does on dodging, BREAK MODE and DOUBLE BREAK MODE are hilariously fun, and the stages are intense, especially starting with Original Mode Stage 4. The game in general is just so polished that you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for a commercial game (although it being a PC game kinda gives away the fact that it's a doujin game).
• Cuphead is an easy game to underestimate because there have been a lot of indie games the drive up hype by taking on an art style that's underused in the medium, and end up getting pretty repetitive after a little while. But with this one, an incredible amount of work and talent went into everything. The art is so good that it would have been a shame if the gameplay was just okay. The gameplay is so good that it would have been a shame if the art was just okay. It's frustratingly hard, but for the most part, the 70+ boss forms are fair with their difficulty and are very rewarding to clear. Every attack pattern that was ever fun in the history of Run-n-Guns seems to show up in Cuphead at one point or another. Even after learning how to beat a boss, I keep replaying the battles just for the sake of playing them again. And the music!

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• The Danganronpa series is one of the most amazing visual novels this troper has ever come across. The plot is, admittedly, rather shallow, but it's still enjoyable (especially with the twists that come later on.). The trials are no doubt the most engaging thing of the entire game. When you find a fault in someone's testimony and literally shoot it down with a truth-bullet, it is so so satisfying.
• Dark Cloud 2 is one of the most fun and adorable games ever. Though the storyline can get cheesy at times, the breathtaking visuals (that look hand-drawn), the easy but entertaining gameplay, and expansive world more than make up for it.
  • The sheer fact that you get a fully customizable Robot Buddy (even giving you the ability to give the robot a voicebox) is all sorts of awesome. Not to mention that the custom parts range from water gun CANNONS to samurai sword arms to having the body being an OLD REFRIGERATOR. Ridepod Drive-Bys people!
• Dark Souls stands as a favorite for me. It's harder than hell, sure, but that's perfectly fine because the game still remains fair. Whenever you die, it's not because the developers were being sadistic (They are, but that's not the point), it's probably because you made a mistake, and it's your job to figure out how you screwed up and how to avoid doing it again. The game forces you to learn and adapt, providing a real challenge, unlike most games nowadays. It's definitely Difficult, but Awesome in video game form, and it is fucking amazing.
  • And not only that, but this game has such many other excellent aspects to it besides its gameplay and difficulty that when put together reveal an incredible masterpiece. It has unique and inventive multiplayer interactions that integrate themselves so well in the adventure that serve mainly to enrich your base experience with the game rather than to act as an separate 'extra' mechanic, story and mythology that is so rich and deep that you have to "dig" hard to piece it together rather than having it spoonfed to you through cutscenes and both level and visual design that creates an wonderful atmosphere while making the fans of Metroidvania-style games squee in amazement. It's truly an awesome game in every aspect of the word.
• Death Gate is one of the best adventure games never played. It deserved a lot more recognition than it got and is easily four times longer than Legend's more famous Shannara. Which is also awesome.
  • For me, Shannara and Death Gate wiped out all the other competitors for my personal "best game ever" award. I can't make up my mind on which one do I like more, Shannara or Death Gate. Both are awesome.
• DESCENT! It's often overlooked in favor of Doom, but there's a reason those who have played it love it. If nothing else, it proved that you could have a First-Person Shooter without all of the blood, guts, and gore of Doom (though it still had its fair share) and its six degrees of freedom gameplay style made some gamers legitimately SICK. Truly, if it hadn't already with Baldur's Gate or Fallout, Interplay had grown the beard with Descent.
• Deus Ex. No other game has kept me three weeks playing straight, with it's immersive world of world-spanning conspiracies, military bases that were difficult yet satisfying to infiltrate, strangely sympathetic enemies, tactical stealth and action, and replay value.
• Diablo II is the greatest hack'n'slash rpg ever made. I played, replayed and re-replayed it so many times with every character cheating the hell out of it because it awesome. When i gotten to fifth act, the game was so heated that not one but TWO different CDs broke inside of my CD-rom. One of them killed said CD-rom. I just hope that third game will take it beyond the impossible and be even more awesome.
• Likewise, I cannot stress it enough whenever bullet hell is mentioned: DoDonPachi. Play it. Especially if you are new to the subgenre.
• DOOM! Good Romero, where do I begin? The game has the most memorable enemies of all time, the best atmosphere, the most imaginative and well-designed levels, the best soundtrack (save for Nobuo Uematsu-made ones), the best fun/challenge ratio and the most awesome weapons! The only things it lacks in are bosses and plot, but nevertheless it easily claims my personal "best game ever" award.
  • Doom and its sequel may be one of the most robustly made games of all time. The visual design, the gameplay balance, the atmosphere, all of it is near-perfect. The game's engine allows to create some great architecture, yet remains very simple to map for, striking a perfect balance between the simplistic block-based levels of Wolfenstein 3D and the fully three-dimensional but hard-to-create levels of Quake. What's more, the developers made the game easily portable, easily moddable, and made the genius decision to release the source code. All this has allowed Doom to acquire one of the strongest, if not THE strongest, modding communities of all time. Consider that even decades after its release, fans still fervently discuss the game and discover new small details to write about, and write up complex analyses and in-depth reviews of Doom mapping... Whether the game is that deep or the fans are just that devoted, there's obviously something mesmerizing about Doom.
• Double Dragon Neon is one of my favorite Affectionate Parodies ever, filled to the brim with funny moments, insanely absurd situations, simple and fun core gameplay and all for about 8 Bucks! Download this game now!
• I was shocked that Drawn to Life wasn't on here. I like the Raposa way too much. And even though all the Raposa sacrificed themselves to save Mike in the ending, I still like it. Of course, I have a fondness for Death Tropes, mainly because Raposa Angels are just cuter!
• With all the uncreative generic space marine or modern soldier FPS games being made these days, I have been fondly recalling Duke Nukem. While being unable to recall much of a story, I rather fondly recall the game's humor and the interesting weapons and power-ups. Jetpack? Freeze gun? Pipe bombs? A plasma cannon that shakes the screen while its charging? Hail to the king, baby!
• Dwarf Fortress is amazing. It's hard to believe it was basically made by one guy!
  • It's getting better all the time too, which may well be crazy for some.
    • 1.0 Will bring upon us The End Times.
  • Dwarf Fortress is undoubtedly this troper's favourite game of all time, it's a shame that its Nintendo Hard reputation keeps more people from checking it out. Tarn Adams is a certifiable genius.
• Dynasty Warriors is the poster child for Capcom Sequel Stagnation, and has an AI that's afflicted with Artificial Stupidity, but its also hack and slash taken to its core. Its your army vs the enemies army over a thousand people want you dead, the way to gain horses are always fun, the secrets are great, and the characters are always well designed. When you do a crowd clearing move the enemies are sent flying by the strokes of your weapons. Also its got ancient Chinese laser beams, and ancient Chinese flamethrowers in the form of wooden tigers. How awesome can this series get? The Nanman fight on Elephants! You get to use one as a mount! Its the most cathartic game series of all times, just turn on the game choose a level and start killing people without all the hassle of wanted levels.
  • Oh God yes, so much. After a long, hard, annoying day at work, these games are seriously better than booze for taking the edge off. And the Dynasty Warriors: Gundam series allows you to do the same thing WITH GIANT ROBOTS IN SPACE!
  • This game often gets flak for being a hack and slash game, but that's kind of, you know, the point of being a hack and slash game. If you want strategy, go look at the Romance of the Three Kingdoms titles. These games personify the fun value of pulling an absurd amount of Foe Tossing Charges, and there's nothing quite as delicious as setting the difficulty on Easy and simply mowing everyone down.
  • Dynasty Warriors Online has this troper's approval, as he worked on the page with only 2 others. The most important part is that, for a free to play MMO it avoids the negative issues of restricting the game to paying people very well. You will certainly be wanting more room weapons but aside from that the game plenty doable free. The two best things it does right for an MMO is make even grinding enjoyable and it really lets you try out different styles. It's admitted that the English version is doing poorly at the moment, when only the cult following really playing it, but both English and Japanese are good. Grinding comes in the form of what the game is loved for, smacking armies in the face, the ability to PVP with many different people is a great unique breath for the series, and even if you get bored of the game you will rarely look at a single part with a bored expression and go "my god, how much longer until i can do something entertaining?" as you can try out differnt weapons, styles, and items during any battle you may take part in, while still having that DW feel.
  • I wasn't sure if this counted for Dynasty Warriors or Nintendo, but Hyrule Warriors is awesome! It's a Warriors game where you play as Zelda characters; need I say more? Sure, its 3DS Legends port may not do too well on an older model, but on a newer model it becomes one of my favorite games on the system. I'm not kidding when I tell you I spent months clearing Legend and Adventure Mode, and I'm still hungry for the DLC! That's the mark of an amazing game.
  • If you enjoy character customization, the Dynasty Warriors Empires spinoffs are right up your alley. Each iteration of this subseries adds more features and gives you freedom to play out the story you want to play. Want Wang Yuanji to marry Zhao Yun? Go for it! Want Dong Zhuo to conquer China? No reason why not! Want to make your own army of original characters? The only real limit is your imagination!
• Dust: An Elysian Tail has beautiful 2D graphics, a compelling story, and slick controls all wrapped up in a 2D sidescroller. Even more amazingly it was programmed, written, and drawn by ONE PERSON with only the voice actors and music producer making up the rest of his team. The plot itself is a fairly serious drama about racism with a genocidal tyrant who hates "cold-blooded' species such as reptiles as the villain. It's also one of the few mainstream works with furry characters that takes itself seriously instead of being a mascot title.

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• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind:
    • Tell me where else in game you must contract a fatal decease and then turn it into a blessing and a weapon? Morrowind made me shiver when I saw what Corprus can do to an ordinary human (or elf...or beast person...)
    • Morrowind was so ambitious and it got so many things just right. An enormous hand-crafted world chock full of things to find and a diverse system of gameplay with huge potential for fun despite (or perhaps because of) how unbalanced it was. More than anything, though, I'll remember how it steadfastly refused to hold your hand - dropping you in the middle of a small coastal village with only a brief tutorial and the vaguest of directions, and that's it. Even Oblivion and Skyrim at least gave you a compass pointer. Where should you go? What should you do? What is this strange land and what role are you supposed to play it in? That's entirely up to you. Never have I felt so powerless, yet so empowered.
  • Oblivion:
    • Just...wow, I don't know where to start. They really nailed the wide open fantasy world setting with that one. My brother and I spent hours, literally hours coming up with characters and exploring and doing quests when we got that game, and they are all implemented fantastically.
    • The Shivering Isles were a beauty in visuals, sound, storytelling, voice acting, sheer insane fun. A lot of heart went into this, and the voice actors had great fun with it, and it showed! For the price, it added a great amount of game hours, and had a satisfactory ending (though it ended on an ill-advised Continuity Snarl that Bethesda will have to painfully swallow later.)
  • Oblivion and Skyrim are the two games this troper has sunk the most hours into since discovering them, the sheer amount of stuff to do in both games just staggers this troper and despite having played it near non-stop for near enough a year and a half, this troper still is not bored of either game — no mean feat considering this troper's case of Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!. There are just so many different ways to play the elder scrolls that it literally never gets boring, from being a heavy armor-clad paladin to a sneaky bow-weilding vampiric assassin and literally everything in between, this game just has everything a man or woman needs for a game that will just eat time and shit fun. Bonus points go to the pc versions of both games for the insane amount of modding, where this troper has put some more immersive weapons into oblivion — if anyone knows of any immersive armor mods for oblivion that'd be A+ because all this troper has found is chainmail bikinis and stuff that makes it look more like Corruption Of Champions than the elder srolls and that is a major pet peeve of his.
• Despite being a casual game, Emerald City Confidential provides a great adventure. It has a great protagonist: she is snarky, she's resourceful, she's strong, despite the fact that her life hasn't been easy, she has Hidden Depths, she is brunette - she's everything you like in a video game PC. The other characters don't disappoint, either. The game takes place in a revised ''Wizard of Oz'' universe, being sort of a seguel to Frank Baum's books. However, it's also possible to take the game as a completely separate story, because it has a good story to offer. The game also has great Film Noir atmosphere, complete with hand-drawn Art-Deco backgrounds and jazz soundtrack. It is an entertaining, clever, funny, touching adventure - you can't go wrong with this one.
• Endless Ocean is a wonderful game, especially the sequel. In a world where Video Games are largely made up of guns, explosions and gore, it's refreshing to see a game that you can play at your own pace, devoid of any negativity or blood. This game makes you appreciate the simple, sublime beauties of nature that you'd normally ignore in your everyday life. You'll lose yourself in the serene, visually-stunning environment as you go around finding treasure, discovering new fish and searching for the ever-elusive Legendary creatures. It's a great way to relieve stress, especially if you don't like the Catharsis Factor. And finally, the game has a lovely soundtrack of Celtic folk music!
• Excuse me for stating the obvious, but...Epic Mickey is epic.
• Europa Universalis Rome: Vae Victis is beyond amazing. How can a simple expansion pack make a game that sucks into something that's not only playable but one of the best (and most addictive) things ever released on PC?
• Evony!Wait... Evony?

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• All 3 of the Fallout games are so dang awesome.
  • Let me elaborate. Fallout 2 is one of the best gorram games I've ever played. If other games "engross" you, it actually SUCKS YOU INSIDE. The music is hauntingly appropriate, the gameplay is simply superb, and the humour is about as black as the event horizon of an anomaly. I used to play it so much, THE CD BROKE INSIDE THE DRIVE.
    • I loved Fallout 3, among many thing for the fact that i walked post-apocalyptic world in first person. And as much silly things may have appear, it does not changes the atmosphere. I loved it.
  • A few choice exceptions aside (Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and to some, Fallout 3), the whole series is enjoyable from start to finish, being stocked to the gills with hilarity, tearjerking moments, and things that may haunt your nightmares for ages. The voice acting is incredible (including MICHAEL DORN as 2 characters: an intelligent super mutant who you can get as a companion, and a mutant cyborg schizophrenic serial killing psychotic secret service agent in powered armour), there's almost never a dull moment, I just can't do it justice...
  • The expansion packs for Fallout: New Vegas. Dead Money is the perfect Survival Horror experience, in the Fallout universe with amazing characters, an interesting locale, and heartbreaking events. Honest Hearts gives us one of the most badass Atoners gaming has ever seen, and a great new area to explore. Old World Blues is the series' trademark Mad Science humour, set in a World of Ham with a cast of colourful characters. And Lonesome Road... It's a journey through a Death World with only one living character, but it manages to be an awesome, sad, open-ended conclusion to the Myth Arc that was building up across the previous three add-ons. When else has Downloadable Content ever rivaled the main game like this?
• The quality can vary from AWESOME to So Bad, It's Horrible, but I have to raise my glass and cheer the fans who make Fan Sequels and Fan Remakes of Sierra games. They do this on their own time, their own money, and face everything from lawsuits to people flaking on the project to real-life getting in the way. In particular, I have to toast The Silver Lining team for their perseverance and Tierra/AGD Interactive for taking what is possibly the most frustrating, non-sensical, Solve the Soup Cans entry of the King's Quest series and making it into something that is awesome on every level - voice acting (including Josh Mandel reprising Graham!), music, puzzles, and STORY.
• The F.E.A.R. series manages to hit every single one of my personal favorite things in video games, from a compelling story to outright horror to a sympathetic child-like villain to cyberpunk trappings and Faceless Goons and semi-plausible, near future technology and laser beams that blow people into skeletons and flying double kicks to the face and ninjas and giant robots. It's a series that combines everything awesome.
  • Seconded. Out of all the horror games I have played, none of them have scared me...except F.E.A.R. It's especially scary because most of the scares come from the visuals and atmosphere, rather than the typical "jump out and scare you" concept.
• Freedom Force from Irrational Games: A celebration of all that is gloriously, goofily lovable about Silver Age comic books... the ridiculous alliterative exclamations ("Rings of Rexor!"), the brilliant eye-popping color, the delicious gooey melodrama of the origin stories, the good-hearted but somewhat softheaded patriotism... and all held together with the most elegant, stylish premise I've ever seen for superheroes on Earth. See, what happened is, a deranged alien king has decided that it would amuse him to watch Earth destroy itself, so he arranges to seek out the most depraved and vile humans and grant them... "the awesome power of Energy X!" To say more would spoil all the wonderful twists and turns that manage somehow to be both familiar and surprising... and the ending! Oh, man, the ending...
  • And the gameplay! I cannot even describe how much fun it is, hurling cars, swinging lampposts, punching people off of rooftops, running into the middle of a group of enemies and blanking their minds or driving them berserk, launching chain-lightning balls that may very well arc back and hit you (luckily, you *gain energy* from incoming shock damage, don't you?), raining down fireballs as you hover cockily just out of enemies' range, making fire hydrants detonate as your enemies run past them, shooting beams of radiation which phase through walls, using superspeed to outrun bullets, turning into an entirely different hero with complementary powers (two heroes have to share the same body... it's complicated), I could go on. So I will! The enemies! The man with the cloning gun who creates evil copies of himself.. or your heroes!... the Commie-spy-turned-frozen-nightmare Nuclear Winter (still the *best* supervillain name I have ever heard)... the hard-skinned, hard-headed, hard-hearted gangster Pinstripe... oh, and of course, fuckin DINOSAURS! and MINOTAURS! Did I mention the minotaurs? YEAH! THOSE MINOTAURS'LL KICK YOUR ASS! DINOSAURS AND MINOTAURS'LL MESS UP YOUR DAY, HERO!... ahem. Sorry. But it really is that good.
  • And wait till you start creating your *own* heroes...
  • The sequel, Freedom Force Versus the Third Reich, is also amazingly brilliant, but the writing and story cannot match the first... however, the gameplay has somehow been made even better (although it's a shorter game and doesn't offer as much variety). Not many games could pull off a title like that, but FFvtTR does it with aplomb.
• FreeSpace is the series that inspired the plot of Mass Effect and helped make a name out of Volition, Inc. Yes, THAT Volition, Inc. What's more is that it's not the first game you should go and play—it's the SECOND one you should really get. While the first one was awesome and all (much like Mass Effect), the second one took the good points of the first game and amped them up to eleven and then took some of the more scrappy gameplay elements and improved them to create something awesome and beautiful (much like Mass Effect 2). If nothing else, this game is the best Spiritual Successor to Wing Commander I have EVER seen, and the second game DESERVES its almost immovable place in PC Gamer's list of the 100 best PC Games of all time. OF ALL TIME.
• The Five Nights at Freddy's series is Internet famous for a good reason. Beyond the jumpscares, there's an amazingly creepy atmosphere that pervades every one of the games, and the story that gets doled out a little more each game is compelling and tragic, a classic Ghost Story of the highest caliber that plays on juvenile and realistic fears at the same time, with a Bittersweet Ending in 5NaF3 that is as heartwarming and tear-jerking as they come. And the entire series was designed and built by one person.

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