#2 Civilization played on PC, released 1991

Civilization made me realize I would be playing games for the rest of my life. I had played plenty of games before, but all were either based on hand-eye coordination and reaction time or simple adventure games like king's quest and police quest. Civilization showed me the true power of video games and how addictive they can be.

The first time I got my hands on it I played straight through until the next morning. Being able to create your own civilization, explore, strategize, plan ahead, discover, negotiate, work together was all beyond my wildest expectations of video games at the time. This is a perfect game to play together, discussing strategy and what to do next. Many nights were sacrificed playing this game with friends.

Going from 4000BC discovering the alphabet and the wheel to eventually venture into space is an epic journey every time you play it. The game has a lot of depth with different government styles, trying to keep the population happy and safe, staying ahead in technology and eventually trying to keep pollution under control at the risk of global warming causing coastal flooding and once fertile land turning into desert.

After the playing the game over and over at the hardest difficulty levels under all kinds of different conditions and opponent combinations I started to check out the executable. I found the run-time library using a hex editor and started mapping out the properties for all the things in the game. Soon I was making new versions by changing land, unit, technology and building/wonder properties and even parameters for the AI oponents. Playing these accelerated or slower / extremely defensive or offensive versions or any combination there of kept the game fresh for years. Making nucleair weapons cheap with extremely long range did not end well though.

Civilization also got me back into board games. Not having played anything more strategic then risk, the original board game version of civilization was an eye opener as well. Avalon Hill quickly became my favorite board game company which led me to the best boardgame of all time, 1830: Railways & Robber barons, which also has a great pc version. No element of chance involved, pure strategy. It plays out completely different every time you play with different people. Playing strategic boardgames led to AD&D which led to Baldur's gate and eventually my nr 1 game of all time.

Civilization started it all for me and I have bought every version since the first one. One thing I hope for Civ 6 is a spherical world. Civ 5 made the transition to hexagonal tiles, just one simple step away from turning it into a hexagonal sphere.
Original version is available for free now here

List

I can see that you have put a lot of thought into your list. Positions don't change, and the games are good.

Conker Didn't make my list because I got stuck in Rock and Roll cave and had such a difficult time peeing the rock guy to roll into that hole. I knew I had to do it, but I just couldn't. Years later I picked it up again and eventually did it, but I still never beat the game.

I am debating to play Conker Live and Reloaded and beat that from the start. Should I? Probably won't do it any time soon though.

I'm so behind in this game.

This is where I put the game down. I really hated that Chocobo breeding, and you are required to obtain a Chocobo and start exploring the world in disk 2. I got bored here, and stopped playing, but I plan to finish this one day. It's on my JRPG TDL after FFIX, Chrono Cross, XenoGears, and the upcoming XenoBlade and The Last Story.

Motorbike mine game was fun as hell though, and I liked the talking Tiger. I really should get back into this and finish it. Only really liked FF I and II so far, X and XII were meh, but FFX had a good gameplay engine.

I'm actually working on this game now, it's really good, so far better then Tales of Symphonia. Don't think I will like it more then Lost Odyssey though.

16. Gears of War 2

     Now the below clip, although from Gears 1, it shows exactly the reason why I love Gears of War. That plus the original Mad World add, and to be this has the most depth in the story compared to any sci-fi alien shooter.

    The reason why Gears of War 2 tops Gears of War 1 for me, despite a poorer story, is that the game is better made. Multiplayer isn't a last minute edition, it's integrated right into the game, and since the introduction of a wave based Hoarde mode, we have seen almost every shooter franchise incorporate this feature in same way or another (Halo - Firefight, Call of Duty - Survival, even Uncharted 3 has a mode like this I think). Gears of War 2 was fun as hell online, and remains one of my favorite online multiplayer games of all time.

However it's not just a difficult, balanced, and fun as hell online that make me like this game so much. Although the plot of Gears of War 2 falls short of 1, it's still very interesting. Very few games show a sense of desperation like Gears of War 2, after all what games objective is to destroy the last human stronghold to flood the enemies stronghold? Only major drawback was the Boss of the Game, but still this remains one of my favorite co-op and multiplayer games to date.

"With billions dead, humans denied their enemies control, by destroying their own civilization"
"Now the long struggle against overwhelming odds approaches a final desparate stand."

Favorite Level: Cutting arteries in the giant worms gut only to nearly drown in blood.
Favorite Versus Level: Subway Remake and River
Favorite Hoarde Map: Nowhere

15. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

     This is my favorite GTA game to date. It took what GTA 3, and gave it a better atmosphere, planes and helicopters, and better story missions. Everyone here has played GTA before, so I don't really have to explain why I like it so much. However I will tell you why I like it more then any other GTA. GTA IV does not have a tank, and the overall map is much less interesting (not a fan of skyscrapers, I like the open roads of Vice City). GTA San Andreas has some of the most boring story missions, and the world map is just too big to have fun. I like to drive around in a fast car or tank wrecking havok, but the cities are too car apart in this GTA. As for GTA 3, it's just not as well made as GTA Vice City.

     Vicy City was the first proper full out GTA game, and since then Rockstar has had trouble making a GTA with as believable of an atmosphere and characters as this. As cool as Niko Belic is, Itallians are funnier to play as and I think Rockstar did a better, more racist job, of making characters in Vice City.

     Note: This game killed my PS2 from playing it so much.

14. Gears of War 3

     It's hard to imagine that every Gears of War game gets better then the one prior, but they do. Gears of War 3 is so good, it's as if they took all the pros of the first two games and merged them. Even game duration, Gears of War 3 with RAAMs Shadow is longer then Gears of War 1 and 2 combined. It has 4 player co-op (instead of 2 player, 2 + 2 = 4, they literally added all the pros), multiplayer has more features and depth then both Gears of War 1 and 2 combined, and the level of polish is outstanding, never seen any game run off the Epic engine run so glitch free, and with such good pacing.

     This game is just such an amazing all rounder. It's great for multiplayer for those nights you don't feel like doing anything loaded with multiple types of gameplay modes and events, it has great co-op for multiplayer action, and amazing campaign with several twists, many of which I didn't see coming and overall this game just has so much more content then most others. It's the reason I subscribe to XBLG and it's the reason I still play multiplayer games on consoles.

     I'm just a sucker for well polished games like this, and I have never experienced a co-op game like this ever before (well....... not for a long long time). This might not be my favorite game of all time, but if I were trapped on an island and I could only bring 1 game, this might be it because of the sheer amount of content.

     I won't spoil my list, but after this, there is only 1 non Nintendo platform game on my list. Anyone who has looked at my list and knows me probably knows what that is too.

Favorite Campaign level: Act2: Ch1 - Using the Catapults and fighting 2 Brumacks. Also playing as RAAM in RAAM's Shadow.
Favorite Versus Level: Clocktower Remake, and Gridlock Remake
Favorite Hoarde Map: Sandbar and Overpass

2. God of War II (PS2)

The first God of War made me a fan of Hack&Slash games and of the God of War series. The second one improved upon the epicness with even bigger boss battles and even better presentation. The first boss battle against the Coloss of Rhodes is one of the best I've ever seen and furthermore one of the best openings for a video game ever. This is definitely my favourite PS2 game.

2.Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots(PS3)

It's not essential to do the chocobo breeding unless you want to get Knights of the Round and beat the Emerald and Ruby weapons (or want to kill Sephiroth in 1 hit). There's a few places that are worth seeing (the submarine enemies are useful for XP and can be morphed into different stat boosts) and it's probably worth getting the some of the Ultima weapons before the final cave, but if you just want to go through and defeat Sephiroth then that's fine too.

02: Final Fantasy 7 PSOne/PC

This is the game that first introduced me to the concept of RPGs. Randomly my mother surprised me with a Birthday Present and it came with 3 discs and looked like it was going to be a borefest...I wasn't keen on the idea of play the exact same game for so long just so I can get to the end...I figured screw it and asked for a better suggestion so my "friend" ¬_¬ suggest I get Bubsy 3D, which is this was the worst 50 game of all time list would probably be up there with rest. Eventually I got it back and started my love of RPGs.

The story, (yes the story) the characters, the music (Nobou Uematsu is still a legend) and of course the game it self.

 Before then, I had never seen so much content rammed into one game before. So many things to do it was impossible to ever get bored!

And of course the optional bosses, which is pretty ironic because now in FF games, that's the ONLY thing optional you can do and it's not even far removed from the thing you've always done which is so irritating. 

There is a genuine reason why I've completed this game of so many times and keep coming back to it either on my ps1, my ps2, my ps3 or my psp, my pc and when I get a vita, I will undoubtably do more run throughs on that as well! 

IMO? 2nd best game ever!!