What video game from any era did you most enjoy playing?

GoldenEye on N64  probably the game that kept me most enthralled and the game I most remember seeming to be head and shoulders above everything else around at the time.   

i bet these are all going to be from 20ish years ago when we all had more time

there’a obviously some great more recent games but i simply can’t see how i would have the spoons to sit down and play eg the last of us or red dead redemption through to completion these days

True chill, I tried to play breath of the wild when it came out and really enjoyed it, but I don't have time to play regularly and so every time I picked it up after a gap I forgot the controls, what I was supposed to be doing and generally got lost.

Combo of lack of time and middle age.

so every time I picked it up after a gap I forgot the controls

this is happening to me with totk cause i can really only play it on weekends and it is driving me crazy

(also the controls are so much more complicated)

 "every time I picked it up after a gap I forgot the controls, what I was supposed to be doing and generally got lost."

This happened to me with Red Dead Redemption 2 - got about 15 per cent of the way through it and gave up for exactly this reason.  Last serious game I played...

FF7, how could I forget? Completed that sucker twice including once to essentially 100% completion. 

I have the strategies for the various weapon battles (emerald, ruby, sapphire etc) seared into my brain.

I reckon I put 1,000 hours into FF7.

i think this is also a function of the move towards “open-world” games as opposed to “now you’re on level 4” or whatever

they can be great but kind of presuppose you have hours of time every day to remember wtf you’re supposed to be doing 

whereas crash bandicoot or spyro were just “here’s a new level to do the same stuff”

That was the brilliance of FF7, an open world game on PS1 in 1997. Incredible freedom to explore. Nothing like it at the time and subsequent FF games couldn't recreate it.

Doom

Civilisation

Eve was probably the most immersive though, particularly the economic system.  I still fondly remember the only business I have ever founded and run, real world or not, running to low-sec space, buying weapons, recycling them into their component minerals and selling same on the minerals market (which was entirely player driven).  And the endless player wars of course.  I still have the diary I wrote, it covers about two years worth of playing.

Got dumped by my 1st proper gf over Champ Manager 3 as well - missed her parents’ anniversary do over a prolonged transfer saga. I did point out that the proceeds (a whopping 1.5m) would allow me to completely remodel the squad and challenge for promotion fell on deaf ears

Je ne regrette rien 

There have been some greats that absorbed so much time:

Diablo 2

Champ Manager 98

Elite

Half Life 1/2

Oblivion and then Skyrim

Red Alert 2

Civ 2

Gran Tourismo 2

KOTOR 1 and 2

Street Fighter 2 Turbo on SNES - an almost perfect game

Super Bomberman with 4 players also great social game

UN Squadron - Bit more niche, but still haven’t played a better scrolling shooter. Have got Capcom Arcade Stadium on the kids’ Switch, but none of the arcade shooters are as good as that, not even Carrier Air Wing which is closely based on UN Squadron.

Doom on a LAN also good, but I was sh1te at that compared to my brother and his gimpy friends, which tainted the experience.

Goldeneye was great as a multiplayer.

solo games - GTA San Andreas - loved the slightly wacky storyline and humour, which really stepped up from the Liberty City and Vice City versions. Also the way you could sack off missions and just dick around was fun (albeit not exclusive to San Andreas). 

Wasted far too much time playing Champ Man 00/01 version (where Man U still had luminaries such as Henning Berg and Ronnie Wallwork on their books), think I took it up to about 2017 before getting bored.

Warren31 May 23 14:44

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Doom

Civilisation

Eve was probably the most immersive though, particularly the economic system.  I still fondly remember the only business I have ever founded and run, real world or not, running to low-sec space, buying weapons, recycling them into their component minerals and selling same on the minerals market (which was entirely player driven).  And the endless player wars of course.  I still have the diary I wrote, it covers about two years worth of playing.

LOL - at uni I lived with 2 guys who played a lot of Eve (they were in a corporation called Goonfleet if that means anything to you). I never played but they often regaled me with tales of the political machinations at the top of the corporation (something along the lines that someone who had risen through the ranks to become second in command was actually a fifth columnist and did a lot of damage to the corporation's assets). It all looked very nerdy but I can sort of see the appeal. 

Occasionally play Fortnite on my son's Xbox but am at best a v reluctant gamer these days. 

pancakes31 May 23 15:03

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How is yours not Deus Ex?

Heh.

 

Deus Ex definitely for me.

 

For pure enjoyment you couldn't beat Perfect Dark and Smash Bros on N64 + cans of nelson and strongbow with the lads.

Great thing about Golden Eye is unusually it was a brilliant multiplayer and single player campaign.   I never felt the later similar Call of Duty games could touch it, despite more computing power to play with.

Daley Thompson Decathlon on my Dad's very early apple with a floppy disk.  It mostly consisted of banging the space bar to run faster but it was such a novelty at the time.   Then it played the national anthem of whichever athlete won.  After that probably Sonic on the Sega.

Manic Miner, Hunter, R-Type II, Sensible Soccer, all CM/FM from 1992 to present day. Age of Empires, Sim City (various iterations), GTA V. The city sim seems to have died a death. Playing computer games is one of the many things I wish I got time to do.

A m7 of mine at uni (Dave) lived in a very eccentric shared house with some fairly unusual folk. They played a lot of Bomberman and watched a lot of WWE - they even made a championship belt for whoever the Bomberman Champion was at the time

one night a particular housemate - who had had a pretty patchy run - agreed to play a ‘retirement match’. He promptly lost and was banned from ever playing again. Other housemates would ensure the game was removed at the end of each session and locked away just in case he tried to sneak downstairs to play it in the middle of the night

I still chuckle wryly at this from time to time 

Halo probably got the most co-op play at Uni.  Honourable mentions to GoldenEye and Mariokart, and Champ Man 00/01 etc.

For recent, too many to choose from but Forza Horizon 4 & 5 gets a lot of play between the kids and me.

For vintage, Harrier Attack on the old Amstrad CPC 464!

“Daley Thompson Decathlon on my Dad's very early apple with a floppy disk.  It mostly consisted of banging the space bar to run faster but it was such a novelty at the time.”

Are you sure it wasn’t z and x to run and space to jump?

 

Lots of great nominations on the thread but nothing approaching the brilliance of elite.

By era: 

Green Beret on spectrum

Wonderboy III on Master System

Sonic on Mdrive

battle arena toshinden on ps1

Tie between goldeneye and mario64 on n64

The Getaway and SSX Tricky on PS II 

mariokart on Wii

 Children now addicted to Zelda on Switch (which seems to have gazumped pokemon and minecraft)

ZX Spectrum:

Manic Miner / Jet Set Willy

Chaos / Lords of Chaos

Auf Wiedersehen Monty

Magic Knight Series

Football Manager

Lords of Midnight (plus sequel)

Amiga:

Civ I

Champ Man

Monkey Island

Populous II

Syndicate

Sensible Soccer

Prince of Persia

Megalomania

PC:

UFO Series 

Various Champ Man and Civ until I got too busy with other stuff.

 

 

 

 

Diddy Kong Racing for me too. Damn that game was good. It was also the first game we got with the N64 and first 3D game I ever owned.

Apart from that, Zelda - have 100% completed several times over every 3D game except Skyward Sword, which is unplayable.

Plenty of hours sunk into Goldeneye as well. Fantastic both in single- and multiplayer and I still play it regularly these days.

Another vote for Sensible World of Soccer. On the Amiga, a few other good ones on there too. I was stupid enough to ditch that computer in a skip, should have kept it.

On other people's computers:

bobmer command on some sort of late 80s amstrad

chucky egg and frogger on the bbc miro

lemmings on the bbc archimedes

something on the amiga that was an epic platform (may have been monkey island but i dont think so)

 

Atari 2600, space invaders

C16 - some fighter jet simulator 

C64 - so many. Probably Wizball

Super Nintendo - Mario kart

PS one - wipeout

nintendo game cube - Luigi’s mansion

xbox - gran turismo

xbox 360 to Xbox series x - call of duty 

Snes - Super Mariokart and Link to the Past. Mariokart I played forever. 
 

PS - Metal Gear Solid I was obsessed with

PS2 - GTA 3 blew me away. Would spend hours collecting the cars for the garages alone, then days flying the dodo. If you fly it into the stadium it crashes the game. 

+1 Goldeneye multi-player.  

Championship Manager in the mid to late 90s - as someone else said above, when it was fun and not a chore.

I lost entire weeks of my life to Elite 2 (Frontier) and also Elite 3 (First Encounters).

Eve Online was excellent but tsadly not compatible with a busy professional life and real world socialising - I joined at the start so would now be one of the top players if I had stuck around.

Fallout New Vegas - for me easily the best game of the series.  A story line with so many different branches and possible endings - and so many side quests - also good fun just to wander around use it as a 'sandbox' - especially if you have actually been to some of the locations in real life.

Stalker - Shadow of Chernobyl.  Super atmospheric and some genuine sh1t your pants moments.

 

FF VII. Couldnt believe when they killed off Aeris.

Sensible World of Soccer. I took Woking from the conference to the champions league in 6 seasons, that kind of stuff doesn't go unnoticed.

FF X.

Vice City. San Andreas probably technically better in a lot of ways, but the music, story, humour and general feel of Vice City was game changing.

Various Street Fighters.

I could never get into FPS, except for Goldeneye which should be on my list. Played loads of that as a student along with… Bomberman! And Mario Kart, which may be the only thing I’ve ever been genuinely world class at. Can’t believe I forgot it. Anyway, yeah, I used to play loads of games. Wish I still could.

 

Ok - by era

 

Spectrum: Matchday II

SNES: MarioKart/Street fighter II

N64: GoldenEye/Diddy Kong Racing

PS2: GTA:San Adreas

PS3: Red Dead Redemption/SkyRim

 

By platform

c64 - elite and a very simple but extremely addictive game that involved a harrier jump jet (can't remember the name) (age 9 to 11)

Amiga - Lemmings (was also briefly obsessed with Nightbreed) (11 to maybe 14)

Gameboy - Tetris and Mario (12 onwards I think)

I never had a SNES/N64/Play Station (deprived youth!) and didn't really play video games from age about 15 until my early 30s. Then I started to get really bored when home alone over the summer in the desert and bought a gaming PC and played a couple first person mission type games a lot but honestly I couldn't tell you the names now. 

Recently post getting a PS5 for my son I am spending a lot more time playing FIFA 2022 than is really respectable for a senior professional in his mid 40s. But something in me is determined to stay competitive in matches against my son! 

 

 

 

 

Too many greats in the 1980s speccy/C64 era to be able to pick a fave. 

L8 90s on the LPC it was Resident Evil.

Star Wars Battlefront on PS about 6 or 7 years ago.

Now it's just World of Tanks Blitz on my phone.