Yet another Friday poll. I’m doing these when I’m feeling lazy, but Shhh… Don’t tell anyone! I have like 3 books, and a movie in my review queue but they are all kinda complex and I didn’t feel like tackling any of them this week. Also, I’m playing Morrowind again determined to finish it this time around. Or at least the main quest. I also have Bloodmoon and Tribunal expansions to run through. This game has been keeping me busy for quite a while now. Not a bad deal for $20 bucks (I think that’s how much I paid for the Game of the Year box including the game and both expansions).
Anyways, the poll is related. I talk about video games quite a bit around here so I figured I ask you guys what kind of stuff you play.
Be nice with the write-in options, please! Try not to abuse it. I’m leaving it on, because I have a sneaking suspicion that I have missed some huge category that a lot of people like, and I will never hear the end of it in the comments.
Personally, I’m partial to FPS and RPG games (and also their hybrids). Favorite games of all time? Half Life series (Valve needs to move their ass and release Episode 3 soon), Portal and Morrowind. How about you? Tell me about your most favorite games in the comments! Oh, and if I haven’t played your favorite before there is a chance I will get it and do a review. Which might be a good thing, or a bad thing depending on whether or not I like the game. :P
I must say that apart from whatever shows up with all the usual suspects; Betrayal at Krondor is still a game that rests uneasy on my mind. It finds itself played time and again, and I would characterize it as an Adventure/RPG in truth.
Separated in chapters, each chapter is open; you have a goal you must complete in order to advance to the next, but the path you take is mostly your own – complete or avoid side quests, travel directly or walk the longer road. Discover the world.
FPS – I’m also a Half-Life fan… and Portal, TF2, Left4Dead, you see the pattern? Unfortunately “Valve time” makes this occasionally excruciating and I agree entirely that they need to make with the Episode 3 sooner rather than later.
They way they’ve gone about episodic gaming… it makes me wonder how long it would be between games if they were doing full releases. I think maybe Valve just work better on a long development cycle, making a full game and should stick to that, rather than taking almost as long to make an episode-length game.
But hey, so long as they continue to put out a Half-Life game every so often, I’ll keep on playing them.
Also partial to certain RTS games. Red Alert 2 mainly, been meaning to try out the Total War series, and Age of Empires was always good fun.
If you went by play-time though, you’d probably find it was a toss-up between TF2 and in-browser flash games. I have one going at the moment called Ginormo Sword, a pisstake of the comically oversized swords in RPGs (the main method of upgrading your character is to make his sword longer or wider until it reaches most of the way across the screen)
It’s surprisingly long/complex for what it looked like at the start… there’s a nice elemental enchantment system to make your armour or your swords strong against certain elements (but correspondingly weak to the opposing element) and there’s a whole lot of hidden stuff about… takes a long time to reach the higher levels.
Agh! God fucking damn it! Who put Chuck Norris as a write in option?! LOL
Not that I didn’t expect it but… Sigh…
Well, the poll is now ruined. Chuck Norris will probably win by a wide margin. I hope you are happy. ;)
How can I choose just one category? I am only occasional player (but I used to play a lot) but I cant make up my mind. I really liked many RPGs (from Fallout and Baldurs Gate to Neverwinter and KotORs and even nethack) but also RTS (Starcraft, Rdd Alert 2, AoE 1 & 2) and FPS (SW Battlesfront, Americas Army and Jedi Academy-is it still FPS?) and I loved some P&C adventures too (these were exlusively czech). – so what the heck should I choose? (well, probably Chuck Norris :D)
I grew up in the arcades as a kid and am a huge fan of fighting games. I actually like most arcade-style games the more than anything. I dabble in RTS, FPS, and turn-based stragegy, but it takes a really good game to keep my attention long enough to actually finish one of those types of games.
@Matt`: Heh, I was expecting to see Anime style graphics in that Ginormo game. LOL
@Dax: Oh boy… You don’t even want to know how many quarters I spent on the X-men vs Street Fighter and Tekken 2 arcades in college. I ended up being able to beat them on a single quarter, but there quite a few people on campus who memorized all the 34 hit combos and could easily “take away my game” by challenging me.
They took these machines down around my senior year and I almost cried. :P
I decided to vote for RPG, since most of my favorite games have been RPGs (Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, etc.); however, the few games that I’ve played lately tend to be action, shooting, etc. where I can have a lot of fun in 30 minutes and not have to devote more time. Really, though, I like a wide variety, because video games are like music to me: The type I want at a given moment depends largely on my mood.
I must admit that this fig-thing does sound like an intriguing genre ;)
I love RPGs overall, but my favourite game isn’t an RPG at all, unless you count stat building. So far, none has been able to top my heart for XCOM:UFO Defense. Wierdly, 2nd in-line is also not an RPG: Star Control 2 (now released as freeware as The Urquan Masters).
@Ian Clifton: What, you never heard about the infamous Fig Thing genre? :P
I think the poll would be better if we could pick top 3 or something. Then we’d have more data points because between RTS & RPG I’m mostly indifferent (i.e. it depends on the game). The choice between the two didn’t really reflect any preference, but just that I had to pick one.
Maybe we should have a poll like this for the best games in each genre, then a runoff with those games – e.g. favorite games from among the best in each genre.
@Matt
Yeah, to quote Zero Punctuation, Valve seem to have missed the point of episodic gaming.
Episodic gaming is about
Shorter games for..
Lower prices
Released more frequently
The first two they seem to have got, the last one not so much
Either way, I’m happy to wait to ensure Ep3s quality
I like mostly fps games like tf2,cs:s,et:qw…
But I also play a lot of games like batmud, nethack…
Well, I voted RPG, but I like FPS and MORPG too. And I used to be a big fan of simulators. So my list would be:
1/. Morrowind (with some extensions and Tribunal and Bloodmoon). I still think that Oblivion, though decent, is an inferior game.
2/. Far Cry (for the hours of crawling in the jungle ending in this perfect throat cutting move…) though Vietcong I and extension Fist Alpha was a nice one in the same genre (ignore the VII which is crappy urban combat in Hué).
3/. Crimson Skies (for the witty comments of the NPC’s, the pictures of stunts, the coolness of the planes, the zeppelins and the totally unrealistically mad dogfights).