Games you enjoyed in the past year and would recommend to others.

Need a top 10 list of games that you played and enjoyed over the past year. I'll add them to this post daily. If you can give a short reason why the game is good it would help even more. The games that you list can be from any time period as long as you enjoyed playing it in the past year.

Air Buccaneers
Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy
ARMA III Altis Life
ARMA III with Go Karting DLC.
Ascend Hand of Kul
Assassin's Creed 2
Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag
Banished
Batman Arkham Asylum
Batman Arkham City
Batman Arkham Origins
Battlefield 3
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite Burial At Sea Episode1 and 2
Borderlands 2
BROForce
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Brutal Doom
Child of Light
Command and Conquer Red Alert 2
Contagion
Contrast
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Crysis 3
Dark Souls
Dark Souls II
Dawn of War 2 series
Dayz
DCS: Flaming Cliffs 3
Dead Island
Dead Island Riptide
Dead Rising 3
Deus-Ex Human Revolution
Diablo 3: River of Souls
Dishonored
Divinity: Original Sin
DMC: Devil May Cry
Doom 3
DOTA 2
Dreamfall
Fallout
Fallout 2
Fallout 3
Far Cry 3
Farcry 3 (Ziggys mod)
FEZ
Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy VI
Fist Full of Frags
The Forest
FTL
Ghostbusters
Gone Home
GTA V
GTA Vice City
Hard Reset
Hearthstone
Hotline Miami
Infamous: Second Son
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II
Kingdoms of Amalur
The Last of Us
Left 4 Dead 1
Left 4 Dead 2
Mad World
Mafia II
Mario Kart 8
Mass Effect 1
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Max Payne 3
Metro 2033
Metro Last Light
Might and Magic X
Monaco
M.U.L.E. C64 Version
Ninja Gaiden 4
Papers, Please
Payday 2
Path of Exile
Planetside 2
Plague Inc Evolved
Portal 1
Portal 2
Project Zomboid
Quantum Conundrum
RAGE
Risen
Risen 2
Rogue Legacy
Rust
Saint's Row 3
Saint's Row 4
Serious Sam 3 : BFE
Shadowrun Returns
Shovel knight
Singularity
Skyrim w/ mods
Sleeping Dogs
Sniper Elite V2
Spec Ops: The Line
Spelunky
Splinter Cell Blacklist
Stanley Parable
StarDrive
Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic
State of Decay
Strike Suit Infinity
Strike Suit Zero
Super Meat Boy
Swat 4
Terraria
Titan Quest
Thomas was Alone
Tomb Raider 2013
Torchlight II
Total War Rome 2
Trine
Trine 2
Walking Dead
The Witcher
The Witcher 2
The Wolf Among Us
TitanFall
Warframe
Wargame: European Escalation
Windwaker Remake (Wii-U)
Wolfenstein: The New Order
World of Tanks
X-COM Enemy Unknown
XCOM Enemy Within w/ Long War mod
Xenonauts
Zelda A link Between Worlds 3DS

The new X-COM
Metro: Last Light
Dead Island: Riptide

Metro 2033
Dead Island (original didn't like riptide)
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing
Dead Rising 3
Dark Souls II
Walking Dead
Shadow run returns
Singularity
Spec Ops: The Line
Hotline Maimi
Risen

The Witcher
The Last of Us
Tomb Raider
Bioshock Infinite

XCOM: Enemy Within especially with the Long War mod.

I've been catching up on video games from the past 8 years this year, so far:

The Batman Arkham Asylum/City series -- Free flow combat is awesome.
The Last of Us -- gripping story weaved seamlessly into gameplay
Mad World -- Film Noir style game with lots of carnage and fun-- great if you liked Sin City and have a Wii
Ninja Gaiden 4 -- Vanilla hack and slash. The difficulty and speed make it fun.
Metro Last Light -- Short, fun game in a weird post-apocalyptic world. Shortness makes it more feasible to replay it to explore different endings and try to pick up on details in the world you missed the first time.

Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy (remake of Ace Combat 2)
Crysis 3
Metro Last Light
Bioshock Infinite
Tomb Raider
Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag - Nice game, but the controls can be very crappy/unresponsive at times. And some of the "listen to" missions can be tedious.

^Most of those they listed except add Portal 1&2. I'm going to add some indie love.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Thomas was Alone
Stanley Parable
Papers, Please

DMC: Devil May Cry
Dreamfall
Tomb Raider
Mass Effect series (currently replaying)

Tomb Raider
Batman series (currently enjoying City and Origins)
Sniper Elite V2
Mafia II?

1. Bioshock Infinite – beautiful and highly unique game setting, memorable likeable characters, and a pretty good story too. This one I would really put up there with HL2 as one of the greatest video games ever made. Just all-around spectacular experience.
2. Tomb Raider (2013) – this one made me an instant fan of a franchise I never liked before. Perfect execution of an action-packed video game, great platforming & parcour action, great shooter mechanics, decent map design, and great characters and story. Can’t wait to play the sequel to this.
3. Far Cry 3 – great open-world shooter, great storyline, great characters. This one is as good or better than FC1 IMO.
4. Risen 2 – A pirate RPG! ARRRR! Pick up some good rum, kick back, and enjoy.
5. Witcher 2 – Spectacular graphics, a storyline that sounds like it was written by real-world historians, great RPG mechanics, and boobs. What else could you want!
6. Dishonored - oops, almost forgot this one! It was great! Like a cross between Theif (the old good ones), HL2, & Bioshock.
7. Skyrim – my third play-through of this game was this year. It is what it is.
8. Saints Row 3 & 4 – I love these games, if you like GTA you will love saints row. 2-4 are all great, but I’d recommend starting with 3, then 2, then 4.
9. Arkham City – Took me a while to get into this one, but it’s a great game with Batman in a city. Not much else to say.
10. Kingdoms of Amalur – it’s like Oblivion only longer and with less to do… I’m like 80 hours in now, and not even half-way done yet…
11. Air Buccaneers – great indie MP game, team up with your friends and sink enemy ships! Out of the air! (just go look, it’s crazy)

Sooner or later I'll quit editing this post... probably not today.
I've broken the top-10 barrier already, still feel like I'm forgetting a few.

SW:KOTOR lack of cRPG
divinity original sin

Pay day 2
Borderlands 2

Dark souls 2
Skyrim with heavy modding.

FarCry 3

Splinter Cell Blacklist

Zelda, A link between worlds (3DS)
It flat out works, as a game. Beyond the basic Nintendo hand-holding in the first 5min, it's great.


On a lesser level, Infamous: Second Son.
It is also a functional game. However, it does have some annoyingly predictable character tropes. You basically know exactly what is going to happen in every detail, within the first half hour. Unskippable cutscenes are a major sin, as well, given how bland the storyline is. Otherwise, the game just works.

Mass Effect Trilogy - There are a lot of people that hate the ending, and have 'issues' with what they would consider to be plot holes, but as an RPG experience, it was probably the best I've had in a long time. I played it on PC, but I would say that it was far better than any console RPG I've played since the PSX. To beat a dead horse, I'm throughly unimpressed with the FF series for over a decade, Kingdom Hearts, basically any Square-Enix game...
Final Fantasy VI - the best FF game ever made. I pull it out and wreck it every year or two.
Deus-Ex Human Revolution - One of the few games made in the past few years that I actually considered worth replaying. I don't bother with most new titles anymore, and I certainly don't bother with most FPSs anymore, as most are dreck (CoD, BF, Doom, Rage, the lot... not a lot of new, or interesting ground here). DX:HR is less complex than its predecessors, but it is a very polished experience. It allows you to feel like a bad ass as the player character, and it has emergent gameplay. You can choose to kill everyone in the whole game, or you can choose to kill no one. You can either punch through walls, hack, jump over/down obstacles, all via your own choices and play type. The story is pretty good, lots of reading for us hardcore RPG enthusiasts, but it's the gameplay (as earlier mentioned) that I find to be phenomenal. The DLC/Ultimate whatever edition are worth it too.
Final Fantasy IV: Super old school FF style game. Back when the sprites looked shoddy and the English translation wasn't fully thought out. Still a classic and I play it every so often.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: It's CS. You either like it or you don't. Or I suppose to be super precise for all those major CS fans: you either like this iteration or you don't.
Fallout/Fallout 2: By far the best two RPGs made on any platform ever in my opinion. They're both over 15 years old and I never get sick of them. Definitely for people who like serious RPGs and Strategy games though. Not for people who want constant in your face ADD action.
Diablo 3: RoS: I like it. Some people don't. Very polarizing. I'll admit to being burned out right now on it though, but I at least have good excuses for saying so. I already have nearly 1000 hours into RoS and it hasn't been out that long.


(EDIT: I guess you could say that FF IV/VI aren't really PC games. I play them on emulators on my computer though... I guess feel free to disregard those if it ruffles your feathers).


As you can see, not really any new games on the list. I find it rare to even see a new game worth playing. I don't have the time to be an 'enthusiast' anymore like I was in my teens and twenties. Things that don't rate 95%+ on every site, and are don't offer mind blowing genre defining/bending experiences generally aren't worth my time. I'd rather be doing something else in those cases. On that note there are some games that I haven't gotten around to yet that do meet that criteria, like the Witcher series. I am looking forward to Wasteland 2 when it finally gets out of Beta (maybe it will be the best game since Fallout 1/2!), and Cyberpunk 2077 had an amazing promo video (made by Project Red, same group as the Witcher series, but it has no completion date and virtually no details for it have dropped yet).

Keep them coming and I'll try to update the list daily.

Child Of Light.. Fantastic turn based RPG

1. DayZ
2.Rust
3.The Forest
4. Banished
5.Total War Rome 2
6.Tome Raider
7.Planetside 2
8.TitianFall
9.Project Zomboid
10.Path Of Exile /Ascend Hand of Kul

Might and Magic X was surprisingly decent.

BROForce is ridiculously fun in co-op. It's early access, though.

Brothers
World of Tanks
Planetside 2
Gone Home
The Wolf Among Us
FTL
Sleeping Dogs
Rogue Legacy
Spelunky

So we can add games we bought previously as long as we played them within the last year? In that case I have more to add.

DCS: Flaming Cliffs 3
Battlefield 3
Strike Suit Zero & Strike Suit Infinity


There are some others ones although I don't recall them at the moment.

Flogger23m said:

So we can add games we bought previously as long as we played them within the last year? In that case I have more to add.

DCS: Flaming Cliffs 3
Battlefield 3
Strike Suit Zero & Strike Suit Infinity


There are some others ones although I don't recall them at the moment.

Click to expand...

Exactly. It's a list to recommend great games to others on the forums. Doesn't matter how old it is as great game play is timeless.

Always been a huge fan of the Dawn of War 2 series. I finished Retribution not too long ago.

The Stanley Parable is the most fun I've had with a game in quite a while. Very unique and different from the standard video game genres everyone's used to. While short, I really enjoyed it.

Here's a list of my favorites that I've played in the last year or two. As with others, some will be older games, but they're what I've been playing. They are in no particular order:

Monaco - Indie top-down co-op heist game. It's INCREDIBLY fun with a couple of friends, and the different classes really add to the way levels are completed. It's also super-cheap.

Dishonored - As someone before me mentioned, BioShock, HL2, and Thief rolled into a very nice package. I feel like they grade fairly harshly on which ending you get. Some of the people in the game just plain deserve to die.

RAGE - What can I say? People can bitch about texture pop all they want, but the fact is, it's non-existent (at least on my config,) and the game is gorgeous. Beautiful locations, fun buggy parts, very good twitch shooter mechanics, and some of the characters are actually pretty likable. Sux to the hate crowd, it's a good effing game.

Doom 3 - Same as above. Visceral, tight mechanics, beautiful game. Not as many "closets" as people say, but it does still have them. It's not absolutely perfect, but it's nearly perfect for what it is, and I still play it all the time.

Windwaker Remake (Wii-U) - Gorgeous remake of one of the best Zelda games. They perfected everything, and resolved any minor complaints from the original. If you like Zelda games, you need to play it, plain and simple.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet - I go back and play this every so often. It's a brilliant 2D shooter, with tons of weapons and tools that help you complete the levels. A hint of puzzling, insanely cool 2D graphics in an interesting style. (almost reminds me of some old Psygnosis Amiga games in some ways)

Skyrim - It's a good open-world game. I mostly just muck around in it, and don't really do much in the way of playing the actual story. I've probably pieced together half of it over time, but I prefer just exploring and doing odd things. It's fun, and with a few of the higher rated mods in Steam Workshop is easily modded into being gorgeous.

Mario Kart 8 - Not much to say. Aside from the missing arenas that I never play anyway, it's the perfect Mario Kart game. If you like MK, you'll like it.

Hard Reset - Every once in a while I pick up a game like this. Slightly lesser known, (maybe not around here, but...) Eastern European dev team that puts out a very polished game with a slightly different spin on things. It's kind of quirky so far game-wise, but it's fast, smooth, nice to look at, and so far enjoyable if a bit simple.

Ghostbusters - It's like playing a Ghostbusters movie. Original cast, writing from Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, decent graphics, fairly tight gameplay with a few minor flaws. It's fun, and very funny. Who doesn't want to wield a proton pack?!?!

Contrast - I just started playing this, but so far the shadow mechanics are good, the game looks nice, and the story is a bit different than your usual sort of thing. I'm not absolutely overwhelmed by it, but it's solid and different, and definitely worth a shot.

Borderlands/2 - I play this with my son and daughter, and it's an absolute blast. Either one actually. I lean toward the first one, but BL2 is more of it, and enhanced in some ways. If you like loot-based games, and are tired of the fantasy setting, and don't mind the post apocalypse(ish) setting these are nearly perfect games as someone before me mentioned. Good graphics, good sound, humor that's actually funny (most of the time) tons of things to discover. I have zero to complain about with these games.

BioShocks - I prefer the original to Infinite, and BS2 is exactly that... BS... don't bother with it. The first one though is as good as this style of game gets if you can't stomach System Shock and System Shock 2's dated graphics. (which is really a mistake...) I prefer the dystopian/orwellian art deco of the first to the turn of the century thing that Infinite goes for. Also, under the sea is a little more foreboding than a city in the clouds. It just pulled me in more. This isn't an all time list for the most part, so I'll leave the System Shocks off of it, even though I play them once a year (or every other...)

FEZ - Very cool little platformer with interesting (if a bit odd) puzzles, a cool rotational aspect to the game play, and intricate 2D graphics. It also has a VERY cool soundtrack. Highly recommend it.

Terraria - I've put hundreds of hours into this little building gem. I run a server (LAN only) for my kids, friends and I, so we have a nice persistent world. We'll sneak in sometimes, build some giant thing, so the next time one of us goes in there, there are surprises waiting. Such a fun game!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - I've played through this twice, and am starting to get the itch to play it again. Typical cyberpunk setting (which is a good thing) tons of ways to play it, etc. etc.

Left 4 Dead 1/2 - Great shooters. I play co-op with friends, and we have a blast. Never really played the other modes. Fairly simple, but fun zombie blasting. Unfortunately I haven't gotten to play it much for a while.

M.U.L.E. C64 Version - This is also a great one to play with friends, and maybe a little whiskey. It's like playing a board game with extras. One can evolve very deep strategies over time.

I could go on and on, but this should do the trick for now.

Was going to say Trine 2 from Steam since it's high quality for a few bucks but just noticed the price increased since then.

mi7chy said:

Was going to say Trine 2 from Steam since it's high quality for a few bucks but just noticed the price increased since then.

Click to expand...

It's still worth it. The Trine games are both quite fun, and look very nice.

Bioshock Infinite
Farcry 3 (Ziggys mod)
Rogue Legacy
Skyrim (modded)
Super Meat Boy
Torchlight II

I'm currently playing Titan Quest atm.... How this game slipped past me back in the day, I'll never know....

The only game i can truly recommend to others, from the past year, is d3 ROS.
completely changed the game for me. i hated vanilla but ros has become my most played game and i really felt i got my monies worth.

let me see:
Plague Inc Evolved.
Serious Sam 3 : BFE
Contagion

Wargame: European Escalation. Once you get over the learning curve I enjoyed having to use actual tactics, despite how unforgiving it can be. Brand new M1 Abrams tank platoon but charged into a forest full of cheap infantry? Dead tanks and a lot of rage.

Fallout 3: Finally managed a full play through after having Win 7 compatibility issues (Ironically solved after I upgraded to Win 8). Starting to look dated, but still an incredibly atmospheric world.

World of Tanks: Nice way to do some semi thoughtful MMFPSish type gaming in easy to manage, 5-10 minute chunks. Surprisingly complete and professional looking for a free to play game.

xnikx said:

The only game i can truly recommend to others, from the past year, is d3 ROS.
completely changed the game for me. i hated vanilla but ros has become my most played game and i really felt i got my monies worth.

Click to expand...

VERY interesting!! I HATED vanilla. Pretty badly actually. It felt more like a Diablo clone compared to D1 and D2. If ROS is really that good/different, I may actually install the game for the first time since a week after it came out.

GTA Vice City. Yes, I know it's old, the graphics are laughable now etc. but, the music, atmosphere, missions, voice work and the hilarious radio stations more than make up for it. Tommy Vercetti kicks ass!

Well, crap. Its on android now too? How far we've progressed! The trailer looks great

Shadowrun Returns

hearthstone..simple, elegant, quick, and best of all, free...I just recommended it to my sister recently...she loves the free part..lol

Updated the list. Keep them coming!

Games I think are well worth a playthrough

The Last of Us
Bioshock Infinite
Metro : Last Light
Child of Light
Payday 2

I actually only really started playing Skyrim about a year ago, don't judge . My list isn't gonna be that long.

Diablo 3 RoS
Skyrim (with mods of course)
Swat 4
Mafia II
Assassins Creed 2 (Only one I have played so far, skipped AC1 because that's boring)
GTA V
RAGE (1 play through is good, after that throw it away)


I'm not gonna add CiV 5 to the recommend list only because I feel that the game can get extremely boring extremely fast.

Arma 3 - GoCarting DLC
StarDrive - 4X Space RTS
Xenonauts - Same Style of gameplay like Xcom
The Forest - Cannibal natives hunting you down while you are trying to survive