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[itisnotlogical]

I feel like it's time we've had a thread to talk about the things we love about our favorite games. The things that make you go "Hell yeah, this game is awesome!" and stuff like that.

I really love the way Morrowind always gives you a truly 3D space to move around in. You're always moving up and down stairs, or swimming through tunnels to find a shortcut, or levitating over mountain ranges to save hours of travel time. Daggerfall did the same thing to a much greater degree, but I feel like Morrowind really took it to the next level because the environments aren't quite as samey and confusing as Daggerfall.

Of course, Dwarf Fortress has to be brought up sometime

I really love the way that Toady made DF so easy to mod. You don't need special tools or a construction kit. Everything but the core logic of the game itself is laid out in the RAWs in plain-text format. I've tried to make a WAD for Doom (a game that's pretty much designed to be modded) and I couldn't even figure out what tools I should use. Much praise to Toady for making not only an amazing game, but a great modding experience as well.

[Xantalos]

Since Dragon Age Origins is the only game I've played recently...
I love how they took away the morality meter and instead had party approval. It made me actually want to talk to them goodly and stuff and thus made me care about them more.

[WealthyRadish]

TF2 is one of the only FPS games in this dreary age that manages to keep weapons and movement in a state where the game is skillful and still fast paced. It avoids automatic weapons (generally), projectile weapons remain the best while most require skill to use and can be dodged to an extent, and it is one of the only FPS games where classes actually matter. Few items are unbalanced enough to restrict from competitive play, and even the most horrendously irritating design decisions have some effective counter.

[Robsoie]

Operation Flashpoint (rebranded Cold War Assault these days) , the mission editor.

I remember early 2001 that demo , in the months following you had plenty of people that worked on decrypting the mission formats and basically released custom mission with their only tool for it being notepad

It already showed the potential.
Then when the game was released, oh wow, the mission editor without any need to leave the program was the most easy thing i ever used to create any kind of engagement in only few clicks and then another click to preview and play.
With time, this potential was expanded once you learned the more advanced functionalities with the triggers, and once you gave scripting a serious try, the potential exploded into awesome.

While there are more advanced version of that game and of that editor that had been released since then, i always come back to good old OFP and using some of the insane amount of mods, addons and islands, i create my own skirmishes in no time and enjoy every bullets and explosions (at least the ones that do not hit me )

Can't believe it's been more than a decade .

[Mictlantecuhtli]

S2: Silent Storm Did destructible buildings nearly-perfect in my opinion.

Spellforce 1 has the most natural blending of an RPG and an RTS experience I've seen. Warcraft 3 and Spellforce are in a genre of their own in my opinion.

Gamebiz 2/3. The most opaque and fun 'video game company' game I've experienced. It may be easy to get down, but I felt if someone improved on the horrific UI and spelling of the game it'd be an easy smash hit. Look at simple games like Kairosoft games/GameDevTycoon and how incredibly popular they are. You're telling me people don't want to make their own consoles from scratch?

Path of Exile. The barter system. I know this is probably a dark horse of an opinion, but its very refreshing to not have to grind for gold in an aRPG for once. Gems/Orbs are plentiful enough to keep it from being a slog in my opinion.

Capitalism. Everything about it. Everything. Just needs more love from people and a big amount of cash to turn into a true hit with people aside from the cult hit the games are currently. The dev is obviously motivated to keep working on the series, I just can tell he's.. probably running low on cash nowadays.

Tons more. Expect further musings.

[sambojin]

Syndicate. The little bars of combat stims as a resource.

Stunts/Jack Nicklaus Golf/HoMM3-4. Real level editors, and good ones at that.

Pirates! Open world, pseudo sandboxy, on any system. Even an nes. Simple to play, with no dancing.

M.U.L.E. The fine balance between screwing over your competitors, not screwing yourself up, and letting the colony survive.

MoM. Big spells, little spells, situational stuff.

Alpha Centuri. Great antagonists and playstyles.

DF/Triangle Wizard. Moddability, from the ground up.

Tyrian. Weapons and upgrades out the wazoo.

DoomRL. Very satisfying weapons and sounds, even in ASCII mode. Sound as a gameplay element.

Candy Crush. An interface a 2 year old literally can use.

Every Android console emulator. Customizable, with great games. Better than most touchscreen interfaces.

MtG DotP. Nice graphics, good complexity for a card game. Needs more approved MP decks, but very customizable in SP.

Planetside 2. Big battles, very big sometimes.


There's heaps more, but this is what I've been playing recently. All ahead of their time for these and many other reasons.

[Seamas]

Imperialism.  As an economic simulation I've really never played a more entertaining game.  It made you struggle to balance infrastructure, foreign policy, and good-old fashioned warring.  You had to balance your "Guns and Butter" just right or you'd topple into dysfunction while your competing Great Powers raced on ahead of you technologically, economically, and militarily.  Just playing Imperialism really taught me a fair bit about how foreign investment, international trade, and the nature of imperialism really has shaped the world we live in.  Especially as an American.

Also, I'd like to call out Medieval: Total War and Rome: Total War for that magnificent, captivating Strategic Map music that transported me out of my room and into another time and place.  I actually have some of that music on my HD to this day and play it to relax to from time to time...

[Araph]

Skyrim: your character's feet change heights if you're standing on a sloped surface. Odd thing to list, but it makes it so I can see my character from dramatic angles in third person mode without them constantly clipping through the environment, which I really like.

Also, the ability to, and ease of, modding. That's one of the best things amongst a multitude of good things The Elder Scrolls has done right.

[varnish]

Hm. I know that Half-Life is a game that is so talked about that it's not worth talking about anymore, but there's a small thing from the first game that stood out for me the moment I noticed it. That's when, one of the times you go to Xen randomly, I think, there's a few of the squid things around, and they don't attack you, because they're in their own enviroment. When I was playing the game, I saw that, and just had the realization of "hey! these aren't just monsters, they're animals. Frightened animals."

It was just for me, a nice little moment that gave the world more depth than a lot of blatant exposition would have.

[itisnotlogical]

Even though Daggerfall is my least favorite Elder Scrolls game, I have to admit that they made some damn creepy dungeons. Sometimes I want to try it again, but I'm actually reluctant to because the dungeons are that scary. They definitely capture the feeling of being alone in a damp cave full of things that want to kill you.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

VENGEEEEEEEAAAAANCE

[Sonlirain]

Dethkarz - Well i like the combat racing genre and the game is my personal best since it was made till now.
Not wipeout not zero-g but dethkarz.
The powerups are varied the cars look and drive okay... hell even the graphics stood up to the test of time and look acceptable.

Spring: NOTA - Few games give a feeling of large scale warfare than this... and it's FREE.

Act of War: Direct action/High treason - A great RTS plagued by bugs and "not giving a shit" support. It's also "Semi realistic" as your brave infantry can get inside or on top of buildings, tanks usually kill infantry with one shot aircraft appear as strike only (no fighters hovering in place like in starcraft for example!).
Not one but 3 ways to earn resourcess from the standard "place oil derric here and refinery there" to claiming banks (special buildings you have to "garrison" with infantry to generate profit) or caping PoWs (that then somehow generate $ by being in a prison camp).
It just gives off this vibe no other RTS i ever played had.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

D&D Online: The dungeons are good. Some of them are really incredible, others are fairly basic, but the first time through a dungeon feels really cool. I am certain it could be done better, but this is the best I've seen so far. Haven't played Skyrim but I suspect the dungeons are also really good in that one but if Morrowind is any indication they're somewhat samey after a while.

Has anyone made a good multiplayer Skyrim mod? As in, you could have a small handful of people running around in the same Skyrim environment?

Battlefield 1942: You can really hop into anything from jeeps and tanks to planes, submarines, battleships, aircraft carriers. Anti-air guns, anti-armor guns, MG emplacements. HOWAYVER, I would have liked to see more environmental interaction. Propane tanks exploding, destructible buildings (just make it so each building has wall and roof segments that can be destroyed individually, and if you destroy all of a certain group of segments then some of the connector pieces become destroyed), more constructible and destroyable features like bridges, barricades, tank traps. Basically,

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory: Never played the basic game, but the mod for it by ... Splash Damage I think? ... was pretty sweet. The classes were all well-balanced, including a flamethrower and a placeable machine gun. Objectives could be built / destroyed / repaired. Lots of maps. Pretty much what I hoped for as improvement to BF1942. But of course it's not perfect: no vehicles (except occasional "escort the tank and keep it repaired" maps), the maps are the normal FPS size instead of big BF1942 maps.

[DeKaFu]

I really loved the design and atmosphere of Demon's Souls. It managed to make an extremely bleak and hopeless world while still being interesting and occasionally breathtaking.

In Monster Hunter, I love the feeling of spending 45 minutes chasing and fighting a single, huge monster that could kill you in seconds and then finally bringing it down at the last minute. Especially since a part of me never stops being intimidated by them. It's a great feeling of victory.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I still believe that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is the only series that got open world decent.

The world feels alive and dynamic instead of a static set for your character to romp around in. Your actions actually have an affect on the world and not all the characters are there for Mr. Hero to come and save their day, instead having their own routines and goals. The survival elements actually make exploration interesting and rewarding instead of pissing around on a snowy mountain hoping to run into something interesting.
The scarcity of resources and lack of "hard" RPG trends like levels make the game feel much more organic and less grindy. The atmosphere is also incredibly immersive with the gameplay complementing it in almost every single way.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. pretty much feels every void and problem I had with other open world games and while the game itself is nowhere near perfect I still think it's a very good example what can really be done when games innovate in small yet smart ways.

[miauw62]

TF2 is one of the only FPS games in this dreary age that manages to keep weapons and movement in a state where the game is skillful and still fast paced. It avoids automatic weapons (generally), projectile weapons remain the best while most require skill to use and can be dodged to an extent, and it is one of the only FPS games where classes actually matter. Few items are unbalanced enough to restrict from competitive play, and even the most horrendously irritating design decisions have some effective counter.

This, pretty much. The game manages to remain accesible to newbies while still making skill important. Also hats. HAAAATTTSSS