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Originally Posted by LoathsomePete
Half-Life
A pretty generic choice, but this has been my favourite game since 2001 when I first played it. While the game's engine isn't much to write home about by today's standards, I still find the game works just as well as it did back in '01. The game's well paced with great transitions between gameplay style, start with tense survival-horror at the beginning, to more tactical based gameplay when the marines show up, then everything thrown out the window when you get to Xen. The action is intense and well rounded, I found all the weapons useful in some way, and I liked how the story rewarded you for paying attention, but otherwise wasn't hard to follow. |
I know what you mean about paying attention...this was the first game I played that didn't treat me like an idiot. You knew as much as the protagonist and slowly pieced together what was actually going on by looking at clues. Plus, it was so mod-able that it provided hours and hours of fun with other people's games based on it. I was obsessed with the expansion packs as well (even Blue Shift). Half-Life 2 improved on every aspect in my opinion, and I can't wait for the story to be finished out with the last episode. Seriously, you wouldn't have any idea what was really going on in that game unless you paid attention to your surrounding and inferred things with clues...every NPC in the game just assumed you knew what was going down and didn't bother explaining anything at all. Just trying to find other clues to piece it all together prompted a lot of replay value.
Anyway, I'd probably have to go with Final Fantasy VI. It had the best fighting and level up system of any RPG I have played since and the story is so deep and touching that I'm surprised by its quality every time I play it through. In fact, it was so dark at times that they had to throw in comic relief just to distract you from the fact that Kefka was a genocidal maniac and really tragic **** was going down left and right. It's the only JRPG that used it to great effect, not just to throw it in just because. For that reason, it beats out VII and X, which would be close behind in my book.
Others I could still play and love it: Diablo II, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (I don't care what you say, it's still the best), and Resident Evil 2.