Here is my list, which may also provide some insight to some of my harsh takes on D2R since 2.5:
Favorite
- Left 4 Dead 2 (modded servers)
Valve took a completely different approach to game management and there are fun, ridiculous, and harmless tricks you can perform that don't affect PvM or PvP balance and don't get nerfed to oblivion. Modded servers gave the game near-endless replayability and customization. - Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
Everything that Blizzard North—who were far from perfect, but I respected their vision—did right in the 2000s is the underpinning of my outspoken complaints about ATVI now. Better play the hell out of D2R while I still can so I can move on before it turns into more of whatever D3 is. - Red Dead Redemption
Immersive, relaxing, and plenty to do. I still haven't played RDR2 yet and that's most likely the next major title I'll be playing after D2R. - Grand Theft Auto V
Same as RDR but not so relaxing. - Final Fantasy X
Same as RDR, and my first and only FF game. The voice acting in a FF was groundbreaking when it debuted and the sphere grid was a marvel to study for how to customize your character builds. - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Sensing a theme here. Plus more fun, ridiculous, and harmless tricks including painstakingly obtaining an indestructible version of my car. - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Immersive and yet relaxing considering probably half of the gameplay hours were devoted to cinematic cutscenes. My first and only MG game. - Magicka
Pure friendly fire chaos and fun. - Super Street Fighter II
Played the hell out of it in the arcades all the way up to this version, probably the earliest game that exposed me to number crunching and theorycrafting even though I didn't understand it at the time. I was into the more mobile, rotation-based characters (Cammy, Ken, Ryu, Fei Long), followed by charge-based characters (Guile, Chun Li, M. Bison). - The Need for Speed SE (1996)
A racing game with licensed exotic cars, created with actual vehicle test data, savable full race recordings, and without AI rubberbanding? Unheard of in its day and age and never fully replicated again in the NFS series. Modern racing sims have it beat on accuracy, but are sometimes too hyper-realistic.
- Half-Life 2 and EPs 1 and 2
- Portal 2
- The Secret of Monkey Island
- Diablo III
Things I still haven't forgiven ATVI for: Deckard Cain being beaten by a butterfly, adding an "a" between the "o" and final "r" in "terror" (Ter-ROAR!!!11235813), telepathic communication, Azmodan being a clown, Tyrael's character arc, all-around awful storytelling and writing, horrific itemization, number inflation that made Zimbabwe's currency hyperinflation look reasonable, account-bound items, mismanaged auction houses, and on and on... - League of Legends
At first, Riot Games felt like a breath of fresh air from 2010s ATVI before I grew to loathe Riot's even worse game and community management more than ATVI's. I ended up enjoying Heroes of the Storm far more when it debuted. To its credit though, League did provide me with one of my proudest gaming moments of all-time and I wish I did screen recording back then. At least one my friends who was in-game with me also witnessed it. - Far Cry (2004)
Overly aggressive AI cheated like hell. If I fired a single sniper round from distant cover, all of the enemies immediately knew where I was and sent the whole battalion of mercs or trigens at me. How y'all going to come at me when *I* don't even know where I am?
Snakecharmed
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