I know the topic of our favorite games was touched on briefly in the "Introduce Yourself" topic, but I intend this as more of a discussion; tell us all your favorite games of all time and then something however brief or poetically long you prefer on why you love it/see it as amazing/artful. Feel free to comment on or add to one another's opinions/experiences on the games in a negative or positive way just do so in a reasonable and civil manner. I'll start things off here..

Grand Theft Auto IV.

I love this game for it's sense of openness, freedom, and sandbox-style gameplay as many others do, but I also love the game for it's atmosphere, narrative, and social commentary. The latter elements are what really tie me to the game, the randomness and freedom of past GTA games has always been entertaining, but it's never felt genuinely meaningful or atmospheric. The soundtrack won me over quickly and Niko's story is one of many immigrants to the U.S. and is a sort of reflection on the idea of the American Dream and it's limits. It also makes commentary on the negative effects of consumerism and commercialism.

Atmospherically, driving through the city with the rain pouring down and seeing it pit pat on the roof of your car while the radio and the conversations go on in the background is an experience within itself. The game is relatively long if you don't rush it and while it doesn't have the craziness of the previous games the characters and storytelling are worth the sacrifice. I'll always remember it as both one of the most entertaining, atmospheric, and narratively meaningful single-player games I've played.

Left 4 Dead 2

I got this game for Christmas a few years ago and my attitude towards the game then was something around, "Cool sounding game, probably won't buy it." I'm glad I have it now. Experiencing the randomness and cooperative gameplay of L4D2 is a great experience and one still quite unique. As of now, it has all the campaigns from the 1st game integrated as well as some DLC campaigns. The modding community has slowed down recently but there's still a massive amount of user-created campaigns and maps many of which are as good or surpass the official campaigns; there's a ton of content.

Finding some friends to play co-op or versus with in L4D2 is always an entertaining, funny, and team-based experience. From my experience, the online multiplayer is often plagued by people who are uber-elitist about the way to play the game. I've seen and been a victim of myself vote kicks by players who feel that I or some other player's performance is not adequate, it can be a pretty vicious atmosphere which kills the fun. But complaints aside, I love the game!

The Portal Series.
If you have never played them, or heard of them (SHOCK!), head over to www.thinkwithportals.com, and check out their media page. The humour & thought put into the videos shows how well the game is designed.
They are about to release the modding tools in May for Portal 2, and I am very excited about what the community might come out with.

Most definitely worth investing in these games! They are very enjoyable, have an awesome storyline (theres nothing that doesnt need to be in it, they dont have any targets to meet... its just an awesome story), their characters are top-notch, the writers for it have a lovely dry sense of humour.
I'm a Portal Fan. I wont lie to you!

The Portal games are great, I've played through the first a few times since they make it free sometimes on Steam, the 2nd game once, but I hope to someday own and thoroughly play through it. I love dry humor and the sort of corporate humor in Portal 2, and the characters personalities are so well defined it's fun to see them bounce off of one another (Wheatley and GLaDOS).

Civilization IV/Expansions

I've never really enjoyed most strategy games like Starcraft or competitive turn based strategy mainly since I suck at those games. After I tried Civ IV however I approached them differently. I learned that I enjoyed the turn based genre a little more at least when it came to a more complex game in that it allowed the player to think out what to do next. When I first played, I didn't really play to win and I still often don't. I play as if I were an actual country and had some level of moral obligation to my people and the other countries. As time went on and diplomatic alliances were made, epic wars fought, eras of tension passed, it felt like it's own special world story or narrative. The ability of the game to create it's own narrative or world history made it appealing to me, since every game felt like starting a whole new world with different circumstances and civilizations. I know most people don't play the game that way and instead in a play to win manner, but I thoroughly enjoyed the game playing it as if I were an actual civilization in an actual world, it added a lot of depth to the game.

My list would start with lots of very old games, but out of the recent crops I'd say L4D2 now that its finally been updated with all the L4D maps. Which I will be looking into hosting a server from home at some point for The Mighty Steam group to use, need to look into what plugins that has now and see if it can be made more than 4 players like L4D was.

Serious Sam 1-3, this is a prime example of a good FPS. Although only just picked up #3 so not had full chance to figure it out, but has upto 16 player co-op if anyone out there is interested I can look at getting a server up one night or 2 a week.

Men of War Assault squad, brilliant war game for massed battles with armour and infantry, upto 8 player if I remember correctly. head to head or against the cheating AI.

DOW 1-2, RTS game which is set in the 40k universe. For me I loke it due to the 40k side of things as I played the table top battles when I was a kid. And now I get to do similar without a massive board and host of unpainted minatures

Currently been playing Shoot Many Robots with Rocco and WallJam, completely mindless shooting platformer, coming in at £8 its worth the money imo.

Dead Island...can't go wrong with popping zombie heads with baseball bats, though a tad easy.

I could keep listing, but I will save some back

Yeah I've heard good things about Dead Island, haven't tried it yet though.

Continuing the older games theme..

Diablo

I loved this game when I was younger, the dark atmosphere, the incessant clicking, the loot system, the disturbing soundtrack and effects; I played it for hundreds of hours. Additionally, the idea of venturing down into hell itself defeating countless monstrosities and slaying satan himself had its' own sort of epic feeling. I never played Diablo II unfortunately but I can't wait for Diablo III.

Breaking the older games theme..

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

For the longest time, I didn't venture much into the horror genre and the scariest game for me was BioShock, which was creepy in some sense but not scary. My brother suggested that I try Amnesia, and it's safe to say that I had never been so thoroughly disturbed or scared when playing a game than when I tried Amnesia. The game itself is only like 12-15 hours on the 1st playthrough, but the notion of having no weapons, the horribly disfigured monsters which managed to be scary just by making noise, the creepily atmospheric castle, and that terrible terrible awful evil noise that the game makes whenever you're being chased all make it one of the scariest games I've ever played. The DLC they released, "Justine" is even worse 0.o

I loved BioShock. It had an awesome atmosphere, good tension.
The levels were amazing, too. I loved the retro look of it all.
I didn't play it very much. Only a few levels.

Has anyne played any of the Myst genre? first video game I ever played on a macintosh (only reason was it was the only game for macintosh ^^). Myst 2 was a bit naff. 3, 4 and 5 were great fun. really nice levels, interesting story lines, and good puzzles. I like challenges

I just got Portal 2, enjoying it so far! ^.^ The Perpetual Testing Initiative update sounds like an interesting addition and a great way to keep people playing with more content.

yeh, the community maps are awesome.
there are some crappy ones, and others that have entire story lines!

the map editor is super-easy to use as well. Valve have pulled out a plum with that one!

Yeah, it's actually not that hard to make maps on your own. I'm also enjoying the co-op and competing for times right down to the hundredths of seconds on some tests with friends.

Recently I dusted off another of my favorite games and definitely BioWare's best: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I can't really talk about this game without comparing it to Mass Effect. I know many really prefer Mass Effect and think it's essentially the God of RPG atmosphere, narrative, and storytelling, but when I compare the two, and as much as I do enjoy the series, Mass Effect just doesn't measure up in all categories.

Atmospherically, KotOR does a much better job at creating and communicating narratives, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and conflicts such as in Taris, Manaan, or Korriban. It's also evident that the Star Wars universe is just much more fully established and lore-filled than Mass Effect's.

Mass Effect's universe seems like Star Wars's universe except with less morality, fantasy, wonder/mystery, and variety; replacing these things with lame materialist copies of Star Wars concepts (biotics = the Force) and essentially reducing the intense conflict between good and evil that we see in Star Wars with a morally relativistic Paragon and Renegade that equates to essentially a difference of methods.

While KotOR's turn based combat isn't as intense as the shooter gameplay mass effect has, it is more true to the RPG genre and they do it in a way that makes it seem more cinematic and less robotic than turn-based combat usually is.

KotoR is, all side quests included, around 60-70 hours compared to Mass Effect 2's 30 hours. However, I really think the first Mass Effect is the only game in the series that qualifies as an RPG at all, the other two are so far separated from what qualifies as RPG that they're not worth comparing.

I could probably go on and on, but I'd just piss people off even more. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the Mass Effect series; I spent around 100 hours on Mass Effect and 130 for Mass Effect 2, it's just that the series just doesn't measure up to Star Wars or KOTOR specifically, and...Mass Effect 3's ending is terrible

Ah yes I have played Mass Effect and KoTor, out of the two? I think KoTor is better as I love the star wars theme.

Joint Operations Typhoon Rising.

One of the first FPS games I began with, epic 156 man servers if the PC could handle it. Much fun was to be had when your team was working together. One of my epic moments? I shot a driver with a sniper and his passenger on a bridge, sadly got gunned down by the Gunner.

Joint Operations Typhoon Rising was an awesome game in its day, as good as BF 1942. Me n DJ played that for sometime. Shame novalogic hasn't releasae a newer version