To All the Games I've Loved Before...

[Steelclaw]

I think we can all agree that City of Heroes was a stand-alone, one-of-a-kind, I'll-Never-Let-Go-Jack kind of game.  If, 30 years from now, I am a withered husk lying in my hospital bed with tubes stuck into thin sticks of arms with a ventilator doing all my talking for me... and I hear one of my attending nurses mention to another that they are reviving City of Heroes... I'll STILL crawl my colostomy bagged butt out of bed to get to the nearest computer... tell my kids I'm wasting some of their hard-earned inheritance to pay my subscription fee... and log in.

I could wax poetic (and long winded) about all the things that made CoH "special" but it all really comes down to one thing... I love it.

City of Heroes is not the only game I have ever felt this way about.  (Don't tell it... Hell hath no fury and all that...)  What follows is a short list (imagine that!) of the games in my past that I have loved as much, if differently, as I have CoH...

* Civilization 2 - The game was at once incredibly complex and yet simple at the same time.  The thing I loved the most about it was the life lesson it taught.  I once played an 8 player game where I ran ALL the countries and had them share information and new technologies as soon as they got them.  My world was a place where countries worked together in complete harmony, never knew such a thing as war and worked together for the benefit of all.  They mastered space travel at roughly 200 BC.  This game was biggest time-sink of my entire gaming career... to this day I can sit down at my computer... start a new game... blink... and suddenly realize it's 6 hours later.

* Diablo 2 - The first Diablo was a little too hard and had limited character classes.  The current (third) Diablo is too short and waaaay too loot oriented to make this list.  (I've only been playing for 5 months and am already losing interest.)  Diablo 2, on the other hand, was Goldilocks Approved... ... that is Juuuust Riiiight.  Diablo 2 also has the honor of being the title holder for my Most Deleted Characters and Most Revised/Restarted Tournaments trophies.  I once had a Diablo 2 tournament that had over 80 characters in it.  They all got deleted, of course, for the next tournament I started just after that one.  As far as the Most Revised/Restarted trophy... well... I restarted my D2 tournaments sooooo many times that... to this day... I have never completed the game.

* Super Street Fighter 2 -  Yeah... I seem to like a lot of sequels including the number "2" apparently.  When SSF2 came out for the Super NES, I bought it all unaware that it was going to be the first stepping stone on my path to madness.   It had difficulty settings.  It had multiple playable characters.  But the killer... the one that finally got me... was that each character had multiple COSTUME CHOICES.  >sigh<  I was doomed.  SSF2 was my very first tournament.   The first game I actually created a spreadsheet to track.  Why?  Because they were competing against each other to see who was best.   But... not only was it Ryu vs T. Hawke vs Bison, etc... it was BLACK GI Ryu versus White Gi Ryu vs Yellow Skin Blanka versus... well... you get the point.  All of them competing against each other... each character... at each difficulty level... cumulative scores... based on a percentage of the highest score... averaged for a final score...  Yeah.  My decent into madness pretty much began right here.

* Final Fantasy IV - This is the game that began my love affair with the Final Fantasy series.  It was also a major time-sink for me and a good hint at the obsessive way I play games that I really like.  How obsessive was I, you ask?  Well... There was one point in the game where you climb to the summit of a mountain and your Black Knight character became a Paladin.  Now, all the enemies on that mountain were undead which, while doing great damage against the Black Knight, were only able to do 1 pt of damage per attack against the Paladin.  Sooooo... I let the enemies kill off my allies and just fought them with the Paladin... for hours upon hours... My wife would go to bed at 10 and when she got up the next morning I would still be playing the same game... on the same mountain... killing the same monsters over and over and over again.  Why?  Because FF4 based ALL secondary character levels off the main protagonist's level.  So, if I got him to maximum level every character who teamed with me for the rest of the game would come in at max as well.  This started not only my love of Final Fantasy games, but also my habit of desperately searching for a good xp farming spot where I could kill-grind for a few weeks... months... whatever... I shudder to think how many hours I spent on that mountain.

There are certainly other games I have enjoyed over the years but these four (and CoH) have been the greatest loves of my gaming life. 

What games still hold a special place in YOUR heart?

[MindBlender]

I started with Wolfenstein, loved it.  Moved to the original Doom...Loved that more.  Doom II rehashed Doom.  Duke Nukem a blast to play.  Then, Half Life, it looked as close to real as I had seen to that point.  At the same time as Half Life, I was wasting time with Quake and Unreal.  So many hours I "wasted" and had such a good time doing it.  I do have to say that NONE OF THESE had me hooked like CoH.  I will add in closing that though I have never met you, the thought of anyone crawling around with a colostomy bag just makes me shiver.

[Ice Trix]

Utopia was the first game I played and played and played, on the TRS80

Warlords series 1-3, particularly warlords 3: Darklord rising. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlords_(game_series) )

The Exile series, starting with 2. http://www.spidweb.com/

Dragon Lord on Amiga - doing all that alchemy without any books or cheats - http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/dragon-lord

Moonstone, a Hard day's Knight (also Amiga) was a whole lot of fun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonstone:_A_Hard_Days_Knight

Gauntlet if we are talking any computer game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_(1985_video_game)
And Double Dragon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Dragon . With  Vendatta - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendetta_(video_game)

Archon, the battle chess game gets a spot and fond memory.

[dwturducken]

The first game I remember devoting serious amounts of time to was Zork. I think that was a factor in my favoring the adventure/roleplay computer games. I did (and still do) lose whole days to the Civilization series, though, too. Also Master of Orion and its sequels.

Just so we don't end up with this thread getting moved to General Discussion or Other Games, it's possible that this history with games has informed our feelings with CoH. A lot of my friends who play the more mainstream fantasy games, specifically WoW, came up on console games, especially the sports  and shooting games. The grinding aspect of the other games, to me, seems more reminiscent of the FPS games, while the more adventure-oriented games foster the more character driven content that we had with CoH.

(Reaching? Maybe.) ;)

[Minotaur]

Bard's tale on the ATARI ST was my first major game.

Colonization, Civ 2, Master of orion 1/2 followed on from that.

[Sailboat]

Diablo II -- so much variability in character and gear design!  Not enough stuff to do, though.  The gear lottery was always addictive, though.  My all-time most-played other than COH/V.

Master of Orion I & II -- great strategy games.  Also, you can bust planets!  Perfect for your inner tyrant.  I still fire them up every once in a while (recently bought DOSBOX version from Good Old Games) and fumigate the galaxy for the filthy Klackons.

The original XCOM -- the first truly "object-oriented" game I ever saw; misses could hit and damage the environment, instead of vanishing harmlessly.  And a morale system for your little soldiers!  It was scary enough hunting aliens, but the first time one ran out of the darkness and infected one of my guys with an embryo, and the squadmate beside him panicked, stood up, and ran forward into her own proximity mine, killing herself and causing the rest of the squad to drop their weapons and flee...it was horrible!  It was devastating!  I was hooked!

Master of Magic -- a terrible game, buggy and poorly implemented, but a great concept.  Turn-based 4X ("explore, expand, exploit, exterminate") with little fantasy armies, but with a layer on top of that of developing your master wizard's spell set to meddle in the affairs of your troops.  Never understood why this one wasn't re-made and so many more pedestrian concepts were.

Daggerfall -- I eventually fell out of love with the "huge worlds, solo player, no real missions, do what you want" games in this series, but Daggerfall was pretty cool until I did.

Total Annihilation & Starcraft -- TA had a MUCH better interface for controlling huge numbers of units than Starcraft, although the units lacked the distinctive character of Starcraft's races.  TA let you concentrate on the flow of battle more easily, and could be very tactically rewarding.  Plus it had lots of BIG guns booming -- one reviewer memorably said Total Annihilation let him do one thing other games never did -- hurl "large ordnance downrange."

I used to also like various military flight and submarine simulators.

[LadyImmolatasia]

My list has a lot of similar things to others, but here are my big loves aside from just CoX.

Doom II - Not the healthiest game to start playing when you're ten years old, but let me tell you that the game still holds a nostalgia feel for its solid mechanics, the gloom and even the mods that are peppering the community today. Doom never dies for me, and I think it's one of the solid pillars of gaming to this day.

Ultima Online - My first MMO love in my highschool days. I would come home just to play it. I started in "The Second Age" expansion and experienced MMO's when they were freeform rather than the popular sandbox. Every day was an adventure, either to the dungeon of Deceit, hunting PK's with my friends, light roleplay out in the old Rp community of Winterfell on Catskills shard or... the time my friends and I finally scored a two story house. Then the game kinda lost its luster, but UO was an experience. What it was cannot be recaptured by what it is today.

Neverwinter Nights - Persistent worlds and fantastic writing were hallmarks of this game. The fact that people could emulate not only the MMO feel but make storylines and characters where actions mattered and had lasting results was incredible. I got hooked almost instantly to this excellent game. Its sequel never quite hit the same mark due to the more complex toolset, but it was a great game. I doubt Neverwinter Online will fill the same gap, but it never intended to try.

Xenogears - A strange one for this list. I found the writing for such a simple PSX era RPG to be astounding. It presented a world of biblical references in addition to giant mecha and philosophical questions. The cast was highly memorable and the plot has stayed in my mind to this day. I never played it to death, but it was a game that made an impression on me.

And then we come to City of Heroes, which honestly requires no introduction around these parts. One-of-a-kind.

[JaguarX]

Doom and Doom II- graphics are dated by today standards, not much dialogue, but those games have something that many games forget in the race for the best graphics and movie scripts. Just good ol fashioned shoot em up fun. Plenty to shoot, plenty to kill, plenty of different weapons and no silly long boring cutscenes. Just straight to the point, and probably realistic portrayal of hordes of hell's residences running amoke. Today, a shooter consist of runnign around talking to this and that character and maybe shoot a dozen enemy and a couple of bosses. Nope, Doom in one level can have more things to shoot then the entire call of duty series showing a highly populated hell. One of my disappointments with Doom 3. Hell really half assed that invasion. The original one and the amount of enemies is probably what a real invasion would be like. Plus the character, a simple space marine that want to survive and save the planet and avenge the death of his rabbit. No mushy stuff, no uneeded love story, none of that cliche troubled childhood mess. Just a pissed off marine shooting anything that moves. Dead Simple (doom 2 fans).

Empire Earth 2- Building up a civilization and going to destroy any civilization that isnt under your flag and that is sittign on a mineral rich territory. Kind of like how it works in real life

The Sims 3- The Sims. Coolest people simulator out there to me. You can build a house, be an interior decorator, and find ways to either torture your sims or make them prosperous generation after generation.

Duke 3d- Old school like doom  except with an attitude and a mouth. Good ol American cockiness, brash, gory, fun. Conservitives worse nightmare.

GTA Vice City/San Andreas- Duke 3d is the worse nightmare, GTA is a twisted reflection of the grimy parts of reality. Tons of drugs are shipped into the country, and people kill and be killed over it on their way to the top. A healthy way of pretending to be a king pin without having to worry about ending up in as desert with an AK pressed against ya skull. The grimy part of reality that no one wants their kids to see but do nothing to rid of the problem in the real world.


Gran Turismo 2 3 and 4- Too many ricers overall, but decent selection of all types of vehicles. AI is not very challenging though, and too syncronized but one of the best race car games without all the crazy tacky gimmicks. The new ones better graphics but lack of selection. (Note: Was notorious within my circle to race and win with a silver Jaguar XJ sedan in Gran Turismo 2 Ironically I now actually own one.)

[Epelesker]

* Final Fantasy IV

You inadvertently completed your own theme anyway since the original release in North America was called Final Fantasy II.

[Arachnion]

GTA San Andreas

Fallout 1
Fallout 2

Dungeon Siege 1 + Expansion Set
Empire Earth 1 + Expansion Set
KOTOR 1
KOTOR 2

Neverwinter Nights 1 + All Expansion Sets
The Entire "Old" Collection of Command & Conquer (Red Alert/Tiberium Universes)
Starcraft 1 + Expansion Set
Warcraft 3 + Expansion Set

Master of Orion 1 & 2

Deus Ex

X-COM UFO Defense/Enemy Unknown

Age of Empires 2 + Expansion Set

My favorites, :)

[AlphaFerret]

I miss the old "Myth" games.  I keep hoping they will pop up on gog...

[Kuriositys Kat]

The Might & Magic series played on the only  Apple  computer I ever owned (Apple II).  I was the obsessive one in our group,  every one else would come to me when they were stumped on the riddles. 

[Absolute]

I've been playing Super Smash Bros on the N64 at least once a month (Sometimes daily) for almost 13 years. I took a 3 year break when Melee came out, but eventually went back to the original.

It's easy to jump into. Playing so long it's relaxing and mechanical. I love the exact timing expert combos take. The meta game is still evolving (I.E. Ken Combo, discovered in Melee's Meta-game, is now used in the original). Near endless skill-cap, proved by the best player in the world beating the 2nd best player almost flawlessly.

Not to mention it's a great party game. Skill gaps are closed by team numbers. I typically lose to my friends in 3v1, but it's always a lot of fun for everyone.


Honourable Mention: Gameboy Colour - Pokemon TCG

[Hejist]

I think it's fairly safe to say 'Yie ar kung fu' on an Amstrad 6128 (wasn't I a lucky b*****d!) sealed my fate. Undoubtedly 'Jetset Willie' and 'Trans Am' on a friends Z80 helped. I'll bet anything half decent anyone mentions will bring back fond memories for me (so far most of the above). I think it is also safe to say that CoH will remain my favorite of all time (certainly favorite MMO). And that's all your fault...yes YOU LOT. ;)

I think I maybe able to name a few that I've spent the most time playing over the years.

Bard's Tale
Black Dragon(I was one of those annoying little kids people would stand around for hours watching as I played it and finished it on a single coin and single life)
Syndicate + Wars
XCOM
Total Annihilation(probably the no.1 spot for hours spent playing, I still play it from time to time :o - IMO greatest RTS of all time.)
Morrowind(with all the billion mods)
Bomberman (probably been playing it longer than any other game, I still challenge anyone who THINKS they can.  8))
GT4
MechWarrior(pretty much all of them and the 'clones/non-clones' of the same eras)

My brain is hurting already, so a 'hats off' to anything by Peter Molyneux - most of his creations would certainly be up there somewhere too and likely way ahead of most I mentioned. Sid Meier as well.

Ah the good ol' days *goes off to mumble in the corner about DLC, DRM and (the once great)EA slowly killing the industry*  :P

@Ghostchase

Edit:A misspent youth I most certainly very proud of.  :P

[Ironwolf]

Elite
Dungeon Master on the Amiga
Mechwarrior
Need for Speed
TFC - Dustbowl I love you.
Soldier of Fortune 2 (online)
City of Heroes
Left for Dead 1&2

That's it for me so far. I have played other games but none stuck with me.

I think of all the one that I loved the most was Elite. It was new and playing someting that huge on a 600k floppy was awe inspiring.

[doctorlurkin]

Ah, my most favorite games (in no particular order):

     1. Xenogears.  I've played the bejeebus out of that.  The only game that I would start playing when I got out of work and quit when I had to get ready for work.

     2. Ys Book 1 & 2 for Turbografx 16 (which I still have).  The first game where I felt a true sense of accomplishment when I finished it.

     3. Doom 1 & 2. I remember actually ducking when an imp threw a fireball.

     4. Onimusha series. Like Resident Evil but set in feudal Japan.  Fighting demons with swords.  Still play them occasionally.

     5. Elder Scrolls: Morrowind.  It had a wonderful new playstyle when it came out.  I spent many many hours exploring the land. But I HATE cliff racers!

     6. And of course, City of Heroes.  I've never found anything that has had that feel.   I miss it terribly.  I had never been so deeply immersed in a game world before.

I've played many different games, but those are the ones that stand out the most. I still have each and every one of them.  In fact, I've never gotten rid of any game I've ever gotten.  I do like to go back to them and play every once in a while.

[healix]

You guys ready for this? The FIRST game I ever played (and is the reason for my love of puter games) was "Tass Times in Tone Town" that I played on my Apple II GS.
https://i.imgur.com/3Imy8wH.gif

The other truly noteworthy addictions were the Elder Scrolls series, and the original Sims (and every expansion). CoH is the cream that will always rise to the top.

[Triplash]

Geez. There've been a ton of games I've enjoyed, but I guess the ones I've loved would be the ones where I spent hours and hours doing something game-related other than playing it.

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms: This was the first game I'd ever heard of where you could drop in fan-made files and have them work in the actual game. It was this amazing concept called "Mods" that I'd never heard of before, and it just about exploded my little post-teenage brain. I scoured the various mod sites, using the dial-up I had at the time to get new maps, units, and whole new races with which to conquer the land of Darien.

Neverwinter Nights: After playing through the original campaign, I decided to try out some of the player-made Modules. Many of them were as good as or better than the original. In fact there were several exceptionally good ones made by this one player named Twoflower. Having enjoyed his NWN modules I started following his blog, and he kept referring to this little game I'd never heard of called "City of Heroes". I'd never tried an MMO before though, so at that point I just ignored it. Had I only known...

City of Heroes: By this time I had dropped dial-up like the plague it was and gotten (relatively) high-speed. My brother was visiting for Christmas and talked me into trying out WoW. That certainly didn't stick, but it did open me up to trying out other MMOs. After a month on DDO, a couple months on Dungeon Runners, and a day on something called Entropia Universe, I finally decided to give "that superhero game" a try.  ...Two days into the trial I subbed and it didn't lapse for three and a half years, when they stopped letting me pay.

Fate: I was spending waaay too much time in Paragon City at the beginning there, and after a while I just needed a break. My brother had found this little game called Fate. You run around in randomly generated dungeons smashing the crap out of everything in your path. You get a pet to help you carry stuff, who can also run back to town and sell off all your extra junk. You can go fishing in it. You can catch fish, and gems, and old boots, by going fishing. In a fantasy game. And you can mod the entire game to kingdom come and back?!? Yes please!!!

Torchlight: The lead developer on Fate had teamed up with a hefty chunk of the original Diablo team and were making this new game called Torchlight. It was pretty much Fate but the characters looked like adults and the graphics were cooler. Still had pets... still had fishing... still had mods... pancake on a cracker, sign me up!

Minecraft: It was time for another one of those "burnout breaks." One day I was watching this youtube video where TotalBiscuit was teaming up with these guys called the Yogscast. I followed them back to their channel, where they were playing this little game called Minecraft. It looked... pretty crappy, really, but they were making it fun so I kept watching. Cut to about 10 different Lets Play series later and I'm buying the freaking game. I don't play non-stop these days like I once did, but I keep coming back to it, all the time.


Looking at this list, it looks like creativity is what makes a game for me. Whether it's inherent in the gameplay or available through easily made modifications, a game that encourages creativity will always be the winner in my book. I can dig that :D

[Ashen Fury]

I love threads like this. Always some nice game ideas floating around.

Chrono Trigger: The first game that I ever truly became emotionally invested into. The story itself was'nt exactly something incredible, but the way they combined it with the amazing musical score and the really awesome combat system(the first rpg i remember that had constant positioning changes on the field, with that positioning actually having meaning beyond "back row") really turned it into something special.

City of Heroes: I was a comic book fanatic when I was a kid, so when my friend told me about this game during its early beta phases, I was immediately hooked. I was "that guy" in other MMOs that always let my avatars form override its function. CoH was the first game that actually let me create who and what I wanted to be, not just "Female elven warrior in plate#213123123 with red hairstyle#2". The freedom this game offered was inspiring, and flying...Being able to really fly, arms outstretched(well, when they added the flight emotes, anyway), under my own control was amazing. I'll admit, I usually left CoH for short periods to try out "the new mmo", but it was the only game I always came back to.

Tales of Vesperia: For me, the Tales series has been hit or miss, but this one really grabbed me. Fantastic characters, the story was really well done, the combat system was "just right" for a Tales game, and Rita Mordio was just the most fun character to control. "BLAH BLAH BLAH...TIDAL WAAAAAVE!!!!"

Kingdom Hearts 2: When I saw KH1 and heard it was a disney/SE combo, I scoffed, and just ignored it(i think i may have been in a teenage hipster phase). A few years later, I was in Electronics Boutique(Gamestops original branch in Canada), when I saw the trailer for KH2 on the screens. It looked so amazing, I literally picked up a copy and bought it with no further push required. I've since bought literally everything in that series, and am rabidly awaiting KH3. Still never finished KH1. KH2 spoiled me. X'D

[Echoshard]

A list like this without Alpha Centauri is woefully incomplete.  Yet another game whose IP is sequestered up inside a  publisher's copyright vault.