Which ones are the best?
I’ve been playing Silent Hunter III lately. I like submarine sims, and the difficulty level is customizable enough to make game play arcade easy or “one-step removed from actually being there doing everything yourself.”
My play level is at the 67% “real.”
An oldie-but-goodie I come back to is Imperium Galactica II, a galaxy-spanning strategy game.
That’s quite the OP. You’re gonna have to give a little more info on what you’re looking for.
As a shotgun approach, here are some games I’ve enjoyed over the last couple years:
F.E.A.R.
Half-Life 2
Sid Meier’s Railroads!
Need For Speed Most Wanted
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
Rome Total War & Medieval Total War 2
IL-2 Sturmovik
Star Wars Empire at War
Company of Heroes
In which genres? I couldn’t tell you the best war game or flight sim if my life depended on it, but I might be able to help you out on FPS, RPGs, and RTS. Want some under-rated titles? I’ve played some awesome games a lot of people have never heard of.
Definitely RPG’s and also any Myst like games. Also any good puzzle games simular to Lemmings.
Oblivion
Civ IV
Medieval II, etc.
Non-online RPGs? The latest two in the Elder Scrolls series: Morrowind and Oblivion.
Oblivion++ and Civ++.
Dark messiah of might and magic maybe?
I’ve burned a few hours away playing Titan Quest although if you play this, be aware that it’s prone to crash. I fixed my crash issues by disabling hardware acceleration for audio.
Heroes of Might and Magic 5 had a pretty good entertainment hour per dollar ratio for me too.
Never played Lemmings, so I can’t help you out there, but here’s a partial re-post of a blog entry I made a few months ago with some under-rated titles:
Startopia - Released in 2001. This is a strategy game that has you working to rebuild a space station. It’s humorous and fun, and it’s a darn shame the developers went out of business.
Syberia - Released in 2002. Sure, everyone knows about this point-and-click adventure game now, but when I played it, it was just another European adventure game.
Divine Divinity - Released in 2002. Buggy as hell, but damn if this wasn’t one of the most ambitious 2D RPGs released at that time. It has oodles of gameplay, so you won’t feel like you didn’t get your money’s worth.
Ghost Master - Released in 2003. I think twenty people played this game all told, all of them reviewers. Your job is to control the various ghosts and get them to scare all the inhabitants out of the building. It’s a fun, light-hearted title with some surprising elements of strategy.
Second Sight - Released in 2005. Never before have I started a game with so much hate, but by the end, I never wanted to stop playing. I was still into World of Warcraft at the time, and at first I hated every moment this game was taking away from my WoW time. But somewhere around the halfway mark, I realized I was madly in love with it. It’s a psychological thriller with some wonky controls, and the story is just terrific.
To add to that:
RPG:
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (200 hours in with my latest character, and I still haven’t finished the main quest line)
Geneforge (any of them)
Any of the excellent older RPGs listed in the various RPG threads that pop up (like Planescape: Torment, Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, Fallout 1 & 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic).
Adventure:
It’s been a while since I’ve played a Myst-like adventure game. Probably the last one I played that I rated above 2 stars was Missing: Since January. I believe there’s a sequel, but I don’t know what it’s called.
Deus Ex. First-person shooter with strong RPG elements.
I am also a big fan of Diablo II, the Serious Sam games, and Half-Life. Not so much roleplaying or problem-solving there, though…
Seconding Deus Ex.
Seconding Morrowind.
I *loved * Arx Fatalis
All the **Might and Magic’s ** up to but not really including #9. These are older games, with older graphics, etc. but they were great and they laid the foundation for a lot of the later generation games. I spent too much of the 1990s playing them. Don’t get it confused with Heroes of Might and Magic tho, which is not an RPG.
I have played, and have not liked, for the record: Gothic I & II, Baldur’s Gate, Wizardry 8, Vampire: The Masquerade. Dungeon Siege was all right, but not one of my favorites.
The 7th Guest was a great game that’s a bit Myst-like from the mid-90s. It’s a haunted house mystery where you go from room to room solving puzzles. I absolutely loved that game.
The Fool’s Errand is a *really * old game (80s?) which I loved at the time, and you should be able to find as abandon-ware somewhere if you’re interested. Just lots of puzzles, some standard like word search, some quite innovative.
There are a lot of adventure games that I played in the 90s, but those are probably way too dated given how good the modern RPGs are. The last one I played was The Longest Journey which was all right. But if you’re interested in them my favorites were the **Gabriel Knight ** Series and the **King’s Quest ** series.
Myst, Riven, Exile, The Longest Journey, and it’s sequel Dreamfall. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura, Dungeon Siege and it’s expansion Legends of Aranna, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Clive Barker’s Undying, American McGee’s Alice, Rise of Legends, Neverwinter Nights, and Mech Commander 2 are all good.
This one of the reasons Deus Ex is my all time favorite game (shame no one ever made a sequel to it 
). If you liked that you should try System Shock 2. Another nice blend of the two genres.
Evil Genius. It’s… FUN. You’re a, well, Evil Genius, who must build a Secret Underground Lair, torture the secret agents infiltrating your base, and take over the world! And now… you know too much. Activate the frikken’ laser!
Rise of Nations. Yeah, it’s a Microsoft product, but y’know, it’s kinda fun anyway. And I like the idea of taking over the whole world, heh…
Freelancer. Another Microsoft product, but actually made by Digital Anvil, if I remember correctly. Beautiful graphics for it’s day (and still not too shabby), can be had for $10 off the bargain rack if you can still find it. You’re a freelancer for hire, there’s a story (a well-developed and driven one, in fact), and you can ignore all of it and do what you want instead, if you prefer. Fun times.
Sims 2. I enjoy torturing the Sims and designing funky houses more than actually, y’know, playing the game, but still. (I’m bad at maintaining friendships in real life, never mind inside a game, dammit)
That’s about all I got right now…
Thirding Dues Ex. There is actually a Dues Ex 2. I bought it online from the States.
ALL of the Monkey Island Games. They still hold up. I love Guybrush.
At work we found a way to make the old Commodore 64 game, Labyrinth work. It’s a crackup.
Alice - a beautiful game based on Alice in Wonderland, but twisted!
VtM - again beautiful.
Use caution here. Deus Ex 2 sucks equine hindquarters. They took all the elements that made the original great, and systematically removed them. And, as has become de rigueur whenever I talk about DE 2, here’s a rant I wrote about it at the time.
Europe Universalis III has just been released. EU2 is also still available, now for only $15! The best historical game on the market IMO.