Best Games You've Ever Played

[Wyrm]

<delurk> Might as well throw my 2 cents into the mix.

Xenogears
One of the most engaging games I have ever played. The story was immense and well thought out, not to mention long enough to really draw you in. Granted, it's been a long time since I played it so this might be nostalgia talking, but I put the story from that game at a quality you don't even see in most novels anymore.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
I haven't played the sequel yet, so that might be joining the list, but this is easily the best superhero game ever made and deserves to be in the top if for no other reason than that. Aside from that, it's perfectly executed. The story is dark and haunting, but not a downer. The atmosphere just sucks you right into the game world and keeps you hooked.

Final Fantasy 3... err... 6
Released in the US as 3, but really 6, the last SNES FF game was really quite good. It had a large cast of characters and went into depth on all of them. This is still my favorite FF title of all time.

King's Quest V
Really the game that started it all for me. This was one of the first games I ever played, and I had to go over to a friend's house to play it because we didn't have a VGA monitor/graphics card on our home computer. This was, and always will be, a true classic.

Suikoden
One of the only games I've played that actually made me cry, and still pulls at my heart strings when I think about it. The characters, all 108 of them, were memorable and thought out. The gameplay was great and had some unique twists on the conventions of the time.

That's my list. Considering where I am I should probably explain why Diablo 1/2 aren't on said list, which also happens to be the same reasoning for Guild Wars not being on the list. I've probably spent more time playing Diablo 2 and Guild Wars than I have every other game I've ever played combined. I just passed 6000 hours on Guild Wars since it's release in '05 and I'm pretty sure my D2 time was somewhere around that number as well. So, how can I have spent so much time on them and not have them as my top games of all time? Well, to be honest, they don't really stand out as amazing games. What keeps me playing them is they are incredible expansive games and there are about 10,000 different ways to do something. Everything else about the games, however, is average, with the exception of Guild Wars being one of the most beautiful games I've ever played (even though it isn't the highest res game with the most textures and whatnot). Being a big story person with a degree in English literature, in order for a game to make my best of list, it has to have a great story. Gameplay comes next, then the superficial stuff.

</delurk>