So I was siting here drinking, and then I actually started drinking, and now I'm just curious: What are your favorite video game SERIES?! (Single video games don't count, piss off.)

I love Mass Effect. Specifically TWO and especially THREE! (FGR grrrr!) I also loooove Dead Space! And Left 4 Dead! I've racked up 58 hours on L4D, and 315 on L4D2. Such a loser.

Special mention goes to No One Lives Forever.

(Oh, and I guess Dark Forces is okay.)

.V.

Agreed on Mass Effect (even the IMO very average - aside from the DLCs which are fantastic - third one).

Final Fantasy (well, 6-9).

Dork Farces too, yes.

Probably some others too.

Gears of War, old Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest, Zelda, Doom, Quake.

Madden

That made me lol, but you're probably being serious.

Half-life.

Is Portal 1/2 included in that? If so, I agree. Otherwise, meh. The only one I really like is Episode 2.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt because you've been away for so long, but it's safe to say that any post of mine that weighs in at fewer than ten words should not be taken seriously. I've got this habit of offering long-winded analysis of just about everything when no one is interested in reading it.

I'll have to agree with Mass Effect. Probably my favorite series.

I feel the need to point out, especially to FGR, that the Tuchanka mission in ME3 is possibly my favorite moment in gaming of all time. The final rush at the end is so intense, and then BAM! Giant thresher maw verses Reaper. So cool.

Edit: Actually I just watched it on YouTube and it didn't seem that great. I was high when I first played it. Also, thank god for Origin saving my ME2 saves. I was able to import my Shephard's face. Every other FemShep I see is hideous.

X-Wing

I don't want to start an argument over this series, and I've only played Morrowind, but The Elder Scrolls.

Of course Dark Forces.

I enjoyed Skyrim, I only played it for a few hours though. It's like Fallout 3 with swords!

Also there's mods that make my character hot and naked. As soon as Fallout 4 has nude male mods, I'm buying it!

I think that in terms of directing, Mass Effect 3 is truly impressive. It really does such a great job of being poignant at all the right moments, and really capturing the "holy ****" scale of the storyline. It's got some really truly great scenes, but to address the point you made, Vin, I think those moments are a lot like the way scenes in movies are, in that they can really only be fully effective in the context of the overall story. There's a sense of urgency and desperation surrounding the entire main storyline, with the often chaotic combat segments, and the repeated focus on the nature of racing against a clock.

You meet all of these characters throughout the series, and they're nearly all from a troubled background of one sort or another. The interesting thing about them all is that they join Shepard in an attempt not only to save the galaxy, but to save themselves from their pasts. It's a redemption story of one sort or another for every single crew member that the Normandy has had, and as characters start to bite the dust here and there, it really drives home the idea of mortality and morality. The Reapers are unstoppable not out of anger or otherwise malevolent feelings, but because it's what they're there to do. Your death is coming for you, and the clock is ticking. Sooner or later you run out of time to live your life the right way, and everyone is faced with the dilemma of "When you die, what will you leave behind?"

They don't want to be remembered for their screw-ups and misdeeds, so they band together. The entire galaxy is able to put aside its differences for the survival of everyone. That large-scale cooperation is something the galaxy had never seen prior to the cycle depicted in the trilogy. That everyone is banded together by Shepard and his/her either relentless optimism or ruthless drive to do whatever it takes to win, no matter the personal cost to the Commander. Shepard, one way or another, is the precipice of that cooperation, and without a leader like that, the galaxy never unites. They'd be wiped out again, and the cycle would start over, but that doesn't happen. This time, the galaxy wins, and by winning they not only remove the threat of the Reapers, but essentially prove to nature that the galaxy doesn't need to push the reset button every so often. The teamwork, compassion, and understanding that finally united everyone is the proof that the Reapers are no longer needed. I love the idea that the only way to beat the Reapers was to render them moot. The galaxy can work together, and it can survive.

It's really kind of a fascinating both genetic and social evolution in a way. Time and time and time again, the Reapers show up and wipe everyone out. Being prone to periodic eradication is a pretty significant survival hindrance that every species to ever populate the Milky Way has been prone to, so it only stands to reason that the lifeforms populating it would gradually adapt both socially and genetically to counteract that weakness. The Reapers lost because they were no longer the thing keeping the galaxy from eating itself, but they were the catalyst that very much caused their own extinction. Tables turned. Evolution is a ***** like that.

Yeah, I was thinking that the Tuchanka scene was probably only good in context, because I remember loving that bit every time I played the game.

You make a lot of other good points too. I don't know if you've ever read anything by Rob Kurzweil, but a lot of the things he writes about (The Singularity, other predictions for the future) are present in Mass Effect. Probably part of the reason I like it so much.

I've heard that before, Vin. God knows, it's on the list of things I'll read someday.

I like the Zork series.

I don't pay much attention to the tin anymore. I can name a lot of individual games I found utterly fantastic, but series? Not as such.

The Elder Scrolls and X-Wing are the only game series I can think of that haven't routinely disappointed me, and one of them only because they killed the series while games were generally still good and rare.

Dark Souls. I only suggest it if you have a lot of patience and don't go in expecting to win. The original game made me rage quit for about six months until I got that itch to give it another try. It quickly became my favorite game of all time once I got over the 'hump.' (In my case, Taurus Demon for anyone wondering.)

I already get irrevocably stuck at Solitaire after 5 or so draws, so I wouldn't really stand a whiff of a chance with Dark Souls.

Dark Souls 1 is great. It's easily one of my favorite games of all time, but I heard bad things about 2.

Metroid Prime series (including Hunters? not sure). Not so much the entire Metroid franchise, and I feel this Prime series will have a sour note very soon.

Portal 1 and 2 has been good, so that too.

I've always liked the Metal Gear Solid series, except the latest one was kind of disappointing. It's problem is that it plays exactly like what it is, a half-finished game that was released two years too early. It's beautiful, has fun, dynamic gameplay, and has an intriguing storyline, but then the second half of the game is just not there. You literally repeat old missions with added challenges and the ending is thrown in non-sequitur.

Also I don't think I've been disappointed by an Elder Scrolls game.

Do what I did, stop playing MGSV at mission 40 or so. If you ignore the 'not there' second half, it's an incredibly rich, well polished open world stealth game. The systemic depth and robustness is unequaled by anything else I've played. It certainly blows your Deus Ex: Human Revolutions and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordors and your Assassin's Creeds out of the water (though you may, as I do, like any of those other games more for as a whole for their other qualities.)

I wish I would have done that. I completed the main storyline, all of the side missions and grinded to 80% overall completion.


In it's current state it is definitely one of the best open world stealth games. I do find the game has problems, though, which become apparent after completing the game. Specifically, the biggest problem with MGSV is a complete lack of replayability. Hideo Kojima originally intended the game to have more variance. So more unpredictable events were going to happen. Okay, cool, so some of this variance was implemented, and some of it wasn't. Which is a big problem for the game. In old MGS games, guard placement/routes was so predictable that, with practice, the game could almost be reduced to muscle memory. This is it's own style of fun, not for everyone, but it's fun for some people to memorize routes/guard paths and so on. When playing open world mode, however, there's actually variance in guard pathing. So you can't reduce the game to muscle memory, you have to strategically approach every base.

Now, this wouldn't be a problem, except the AI reacts to the player exactly the same in every encounter in open world mode. Every single time you destroy a power supply, the CP calls the soldiers and has one check, and one always calls back with the mysterious knowledge that someone intentionally destroyed the supply without even looking at it. Then the base goes on alert. This happens every time. Almost every interaction with a guard is like this; they react so predictably that the game can become boring. You also notice that, the trucks which seem to drive around randomly actually just follow one loop between bases on repeat forever, etc. The variance which makes the campaign fun is actually hardcoded variance. So what you get with all of this is a game that requires you to think strategically because guards have random paths but all of the combat is pretty much exactly the same. Which makes end game tedious, because one slip up is really annoying to deal with.

Not saying it's a bad game, of course, it just gets to this point where there's a weird limbo where the game is either not variant enough or too variant. I'm pretty sure all of this is a consequence of Konami forcing an early release, too, since Kojima's early development versions contained more of this variance; it seems to have been stripped away instead of debugged to get the game released.

By the way, having not played any of the others I can't speak to the series as a whole, but The Witcher 3 is probably the best single player game I've ever finished. It has a rich detailed world, great characters and a wonderfully written story that responds to the player's decisions in the deepest way I've ever seen. It's also the only game to me where most of the side quests felt meaningful despite there being so many of them. A lot of my favorite moments were in the side quests, and yet you could theoretically just coast through the main storyline missing everything the side quests had to offer and it would still be a great experience. What a beautiful, beautiful game.

The gameplay could get a little clunky, though. A lot of that was fixed in updates. Some people don't like the character development system, which admittedly isn't the greatest.

Seconded, Witcher 3 is tops.

Mine are:
* Gothic (excluding Arcania)
* No One Lives Forever
* Thief (excluding Thiaf)

I remember buying NOLF on the release day. But I have no idea why. Usually I only do this when I'm really hyped. But it wasn't a decision I regretted.

I love Mass Effect. ME2 is my favorite game of all time, and while ME3 has some really dumb and bad moments, the good moments (eg Tuchanka like you said Vin) are even better than the best of ME2.

I really loved Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood--when I played those I would have happily said it was my favorite series--but it's lost my interest a lot over the years.

Ace Combat 4 and 5 are some of my favorite games ever, and even though every Ace Combat game since has been a little less good, I still feel like I'm super loyal to the series. I'm super excited for 7--PlayStation VR native support!

My list ain't so original:
-Jedi Knight
-Half-Life/Portal
-Zelda
-Mario (and the common spin-offs)

Dark Forces
Doom
Heretic/HeXen
Carnivores

And yah, I guess Call of Duty. Hey, don't judge.

I used to play Battlefield a ton, from 194 through BF3. BF3 started in a direction I wasn't too thrilled about so I haven't played any since.

Aside from that, many of the series already listed here, X-wing series, and used to play Supreme Commander as well.

Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Civilization. Maybe two thousand hours of gaming sunk into just those three series.

The Civilization series has always intrigued me but for some odd reason I haven't yet given it a go. Which game would you recommend for someone just starting out with the series? Should I just wait for VI?

Well, Mentat, I hadn't played any Civilization games before IV and I more or less instantly got into it and even had my first mod release ever for it. All this way back in late 2005.

Of course, I tried the demo first, so maybe if Civ6 will have a demo you should check that one out first.

I had completely forgotten about game demos until you mentioned it. I'll grab the demo via Steam for Civ5. Thanks for the reminder! The entire series is 75% off ATM, in case someone else is interested.

IV is my personal favorite, but it's much harder to get into than V. V is worth it if you can get it so cheaply.