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[ToonyMan]

Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes?  You might have bought this on Steam even.

[Spiral42]

Your definition of "good" may vary. It is my opinion that the people who enjoy it are happy for the risks it takes, while the people who dislike it were hoping for a much shinier Dawn of War 1 remake complete with base-building. Another tournament skirmish RTS, basically.

I don't know is that's *quite* accurate. People didn't want "just a shinier DoW 1 remake with base building." They wanted Relic to take all the goodness they'd developed with Company of Heroes and apply it to the DoW franchise. That only happened in about 20% of the game.
[snip]

You're right, I'd forgotten about the scrapped CoH improvements. I never played CoH, but I can understand why that'd be a substantial letdown for many. It's a shame, and I can't see why they were taken out. I've also seen absolutely nothing to suggest they're reintegrating that stuff for Retribution.

[BigD145]

www.boardgamegeek.com

[Spiral42]

But we want to know too! We don't care if it's your only post and you're a lurker or a VERY clever spambot. INFORM US!

The spambots are sounding a little desperate at the moment, so it's possible. Regardless, I'd also like to see this list.
I used to follow Adrian Werner's Reasons it's worth being a PC gamer but he seems to be both getting tied down with that "real life" thing and starting to fill it out with countless casual hidden object / room escape games that all look the same. At any rate there are still a few gems one may have never heard of, or forgotten about.

[ein]

GearHead2.
RPG/roguelike with TBS elements, mostly in arena mode.
Also, you can easily mod custom storylines, mecha, factions, and other things.

[ductape]

if you play too many games, you will eventually realize that they are all a bunch of numbers with buttons that make some pixels move around. Theres really nothing very new under the sun here, and once you are looking into the face of game mechanics, it gets old fast.

[Akura]

GearHead2.
RPG/roguelike with TBS elements, mostly in arena mode.
Also, you can easily mod custom storylines, mecha, factions, and other things.

Plus, some of the random(ly generated?) things NPCs say can sound pretty crazy. With crazy being awesome.

[mross]

I feel your pain. In 15+ years I've yet to see a truly good game.

Quest for Glory series: semi-interesting story, mediocre gameplay. Meh.
Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander: Better economy model than all other strategy games, better implementation of warfare, but still meh overall. The actual gameplay is utterly tedious, and the battles aren't actually satisfying.
Die by the Sword: Imprecise, but playable implementation of physics-based swordplay. Gets boring after an hour or two though.
Hammerfight: Better physics, more solid and streamlined interface, but still only a few really interesting hours. Would have been amazing with multiplayer.
Dwarf Fortress: Interesting concept, but bland gameplay overall. May hold my attention if Toady codes true sentience in to the members of the game's races.
Minecraft: Same problem as DF - bland, but even less depth.
All Blizzard games: Again, just bland, with nothing to grab or hold attention. Not saying the games are poorly-made - the concepts are poor, not their execution.

My requirements for a legitimately good game would be:

Strategy(RTS or TBS): A.I. that is truly intelligent. Can out-think and surprise the people that coded it. Nothing pre-scripted. Learns within and across games. Reacts to macro and micro situations in ways that actual humans would. Can keep up with the exploded economy in the late-game, so that your horde of super-units is met by a bigger horde of super-units, as opposed to one (that specific example is from SupCom).

RPG/MMO/any game where you talk to dudes: NPCs whose speech is procedurally generated, and completely indistinguishable from human interaction, if there is social interaction with NPCs at all. Do it right, or don't do it. Don't be that guy. You know, Oblivion.

Any game with single-unit control (fighting games, platformers, etc.): Actual battles. Visceral. Emergent from the game's physics engine. None of this pre-coded "special move" bullshit. The physics engine should be fully accurate, such that any weapon or fighting style can be used, and it will behave predictably, according to how it functions in the real world. No health, no numerical damage. DF makes an admirable attempt at this, but text is just not the correct medium. Such a game would require an interface that can take inputs for all joints, and all ranges of motion simultaneously, as well as giving accurate feedback for inertia and material textures.

[ibot66]

I am not sure all you ask is possible.

[mross]

Oh, I know it's not. At least not until the singularity.

[x2yzh9]

The Strategy(RTS or TBS) part sounds interesting, mross. I think it would be possible, but it'd require a helluva good team to do it.

[Neonivek]

Well Mross won't like my game suggestions... No one likes Point and Clicks anymore.

[Shades]

Oh, I know it's not. At least not until the singularity.

Actually what you ask for doesn't require human levels of intelligence so no singularity required. It just needs to be a whole lot better than we've seen so far. Although the RPG stuff would require solving the various natural language problems.

An interesting aside a berkeley team won a recent starcraft AI comperition, not sure how close it is to truly out thinking a human but it did beat the designers, one of whom was ranked top 20 in europe. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/01/skynet-meets-the-swarm-how-the-berkeley-overmind-won-the-2010-starcraft-ai-competition.ars/

[Rakonas]

I can't wait until we get some sentient AI.
There'll be nothing like getting my ass kicked by a sentient machine while it makes fun of my pathetic lack of skill.

[Il Palazzo]

If it's sentient, it might not want to play with you at all.