I got into text adventures around 1989. Still love 'em. I’ve managed to get through the Zork trilogy, Return to Zork, Zork Zero, Deadline, Suspended, Wishbringer, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Infidel…I’m sure there’s a few more in there that I’m forgetting. Never got into Myst, but would have liked to.
I’m generally a turn-based RPG and puzzle game person, although every once in a while I don’t mind a good platformer (Mario series is classic, of course) or games where a bunch of us can play together (racing, tennis/golf/whatever, party, etc.).
FPSes also give me motion sickness. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are alright, especially given the fun weaponry we get. (Ah, the Grenade Launcher. :D)
I’m still looking for an MMORPG that 1) doesn’t eat up an unreasonable amount of free time (i.e., I can play for 1 ~ 2 hours a pop and actually accomplish something), and 2) isn’t full of annoying people. It doesn’t help that I’m generally not a social person to begin with.
Right now, my game-time is filled with City of Heroes/Villains; Soul Calibur III on the PS2; and Dragon Quest VIII, same system.
I like games where I can explore, obsessively, every little nook and cranny of the gameworld, find all the secret items, do all the quests, and really get a sense that I’ve “completed” the game. I also enjoy games that require me to think fast, but I don’t have much use for games that try to invoke fear or tension. I’m generally non-competitive, except at fighting games. (I’ve played multiplayer FPS’s twice.)
Story is a plus, but I also enjoy simple little distractions like Minesweeper.
Oooh, I loved Seiklus! Have you played Doukutsu Monogatari, aka Cave Story?
I don’t know if you’ve tried or are interested in EQII (specifically, II, not the first one), but they’ve made enormous changes recently, and the game is very kind to the casual gamer, IME. I’m a level 54 assassin, and I did it solo, in one to two hour sessions. Sometimes while cooking dinner. 
Granted, it took me over a year to get there, but I’m an explorer. Or, in other words, I’m a slow leveller! I’m not a power gamer. Also, I play around with many alts.
I’m in a guild, but only because they’re real life buddies of mine. There are only four of us, and we’re guild level 25. It doesn’t take a whole lot of effort.
I don’t find a lot of annoying people on my server (Najena) - I rarely speak to anyone but my husband and friends in-game, and I am rarely spoken to. Naturally, being an MMORPG, you’ll get a random jerk or noob now and then, but it’s very easy to just ignore them, either by using the ignore feature, or sheer will. Most of the people I’ve met outside of my friends have been pretty friendly and helpful, but I don’t go out of my way to meet folks, keep to myself, solo respectfully - it’s been a year and I have a high end horse, a three room apartment, a stack of spare platinum in the bank, good armour/weapons…
Anyway, just putting that out there. That’s been my experience. Many people will try to scare you away by telling you about the lousy customer service, and they’re not totally wrong - but I’ve had nothing but good experiences with them, and rarely have a need to deal with them, anyway. Smooth sailing for the casual gamer, I find.
I loved Myst (and the sequels, though I missed out on Riven), The Longest Journey, Black Dahlia and those type of adventure games.
I love 2D and 3D platformers (2D like old Mario Games, 3D like Rayman or Psychonauts). I tend to get too frustrated with stealth games, and often a shooter with a stealth level will put me off the game forever.
Couple of near-extinct genres - Turn-based strategy (X-Com, Master of Magic) and space sim (Tie Fighter, Descent). Thank god for Windows XP’s DOS compatibility!
Also like SRPGs (Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea).
Can also go for old-school shooters/platformers.
FPS and RTS are OK but they all seem the same and I get bored of them.
You evil temptress! Nothing addicts me more than a good MMORPG. I only barely escaped (with my non-life) from FFXI, and two years later I still yearn for the locales as if they were real places I want to re-visit.
I like pretty much all kinds. Some of my favorites: Earthbound, System Shock 2, Deus Ex.
Shooters: I enjoy a good fps. I’m not big on the whole twitch thing, and deathmatch doesn’t interest me, but I have a lot of fun with many of these games.
Third person shooters are fun too. Max Payne 2, as mentioned earlier in this thread, is such a great game, better than the first. It may be short but it’s excellent throughout. Also: he looks kind of like Leonard Cohen in this game.
I also really liked Killer 7. It was cool to see a game do so many weird things. There are some parts I didn’t like, such as the mazier parts. No, I don’t understand the story.
The simplistic control scheme led to one of the most memorable moments (for me) in a video game. I’ll leave this vague so as to not spoil too much. Near the end when you’re going through the hotel rooms and having flashbacks of killing people (or maybe they were killed by someone else, I don’t remember) but only pushing one button to move the character I felt like I was actually complicit in their killings, even though they were killed in the past. I was directing the character to move forward, even though he chose where he was going, I was driving him.
I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone the way I explained it. But some incredibly dramatic moments can be created by having the game choose the direction but the player pushing them forward. I can envision for example a game where the player has to figure out where the character is going.
Stealth: I loved some parts of the Thief games, even though I’m terrible at the stealth thing. I try to take out as many guards as I can because I don’t like having to worry guards walking around behind me.
The first Thief was kind of disappointing because I didn’t like the zombies and monsters thing; I’d prefer stealing from people with human guards.
I don’t like the Splinter Cell games as much. I’m not sure why. Maybe they’re just too complex. But I have to say that the next one does sound cool.
RPG’s: I like both console and PC RPG’s, for different reasons. I got a PS2 not too long ago so I’ve been catching up on some of the games for that. I played Final Fantasy X and really liked it, even though I don’t like the level-up system. Right now I’m playing FF VII for the first time and liking that, but I don’t like the real time battle system or juggling materia around.
I don’t like the combat in PC RPG’s. It gets to be too much controlling ~8 different characters of different classes.
Action/Platforming: I really like the recent Prince of Persia games. But I have to say, I really don’t like God of War. I can appreciate dark humor, but there seems to be an underlying contempt for people. Plus, the combat is boring.
Hooray for Manny Calavera! I loved that game. It was chock full o’ great lines, much like a great movie. In fact, these quotes were cut from the IMdB:
Manuel Calavera: I think we should team up - be partners.
Domino Hurley: Oh, I would, but I could never be partners with someone who was so much more of a man than me.
Manuel Calavera: Oh, come on… I’ve seen your wife.
Manuel Calavera: Run, you pigeons. It’s Robert Frost.
[Glottis adds hydraulics to the Bone Wagon]
Manuel Calavera: What a relief. I was getting concerned that our transportation wasn’t ostentatious enough.
Olivia Ofrenda: Why are you leaving town?
Manuel Calavera: I’m chasing a woman I met once and can’t forget.
Olivia Ofrenda: Well, I have a poem I wrote just for you. Pay attention because it’s pretty short. Here it goes: Ch-ch-ch-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-mp.
Manuel Calavera: Mmmmmmm. SHOWBUSINESS coffee.
Olivia Ofrenda: [reading a poem] With bony hands I hold my partner/ On soulless feet we cross the floor/ The music stops as if to answer/ An empty knocking at the door/ It seems his skin was sweet as mango/ When last I held him to my breast/ But now we dance this grim fandango/ And will four years before we rest.
Interesting little trivia: Silent Hill 4 wasn’t intended to be a Silent Hill game. According to what I’ve heard since the game has been out (and I’ve played it through, though couldn’t bring myself to do so again), the game was intended to be COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT of the Silent Hill then-trilogy.
The marketing guys were worried about the sales of the game, and one of them, who will probably end up being chewed in a mouth Satan had specially built for him, said: “Why don’t we just tack Silent Hill on to the title?”
BOOM. Barnum was right. I think I was probably born over FIVE minutes to fall for that load…
The game wasn’t that bad, really. But much like sequels which would be great if you looked at them separate from their predecessors, it didn’t even TRY and fill the shoes of the previous games. I found it too choppy to have the gnawing fear of the rest of the Silent Hill games (i.e., in Silent Hill 1, 2, 3 you had to wander around a big scary area for a while, unlocking little mini-stories and stuff, in 4 you stayed in there for ten minutes, jumped back out, and then went onto the next area).
Anyway. I’m a big fan of those adventure games. I’m not even sure of the genre. Do they have a genre? Grim Fandango, The Monkey Island Series, ** Full Throttle**, Invasion of the Tentacles, etc…etc. Anyone remember those? Those were great games.
They don’t make them like they used to…
Now I get off on strategy games, usually ones from Paradox Interactive that take an unholy amount of micromanagement. Vicky is very interesting, if you don’t roll into a ball and start crying at the sheer weight of crap piled onto you.
wow, it’s kinda weird to me how some of you limit yourself to one genre…i’m apaprently a huge video game slut.
well, let’s see…where do we begin?
well, with the old nintendo (never got a sega) i played just about everything i could get my hands on, and beat almost all of them, too. i maintain that AD&D pool of radiance for the regular nintendo is the best rpg of all time. the graphics are a tad lacking, but it’s grrrrreat. it took me forever to beat it the first time around and i downloaded it and beat it on my computer last year.
um with super nintendo, the best game might have been final fantasy 3 or act raiser. that was one badass game.
with nintendo 64, i’m a mario kart badass. i could still dominate any one of you in it, and i will happily take on all comers. unfortunately, they brought goldeneye into my existence. needless to say, i have every single unlockable done in that game and it opened up my eyes to the FPS genre.
i played some ps/ps2, but not a whole ton…i’ve been made an xbox guy…
except i played SO much super nintendo back in the day, my fingers (and subconscious) still remember the A,B,X,Y button combination…and when i play xbox, i can’t look at the button and hit the corresponding xbox one…my mind still hits the super nintendo one…so i’ve got to train myself to ignore the button and tell myself to hit the proper one…so the passing drills in madden training camp mess me up special bad.
this brings us to halo. i never played multiplayer in halo 1, but i made up for it in halo 2. i now dominate my school in halo 2, and there’s a professional, sponsored halo2 player on campus too.
when i go back home, my buddies and i rent the silent hill/resident evil types…we’re all giant pussies when it comes to scary movies, but we play the games…go fig. we wait for dark and then group together in the basement and collectively shit ourselves. fatal frame 2 was our undoing. when we have those stealth type games, like metal gear, or resident evil-ish games, i’m almost always controlling it…i’ve got a knack for those games for some reason. we stoped fatal frame 2 about…half way because we got so freaked out…and we had it for a week at that time from blockbuster…so we had to take it back…or that’s what we tell ourselves.
i did the max payne thing and was tearing through it…until the second dream sequence…it just got gay…and i lost TOTAL interest in it because it was so farfetched…too bad, i really liked the game until that point, too.
i like me a good rpg, but it seems that i haven’t found/heard of a good one these days…morrowind was okay…but i was really just meh about the whole thing. playing online is fun, but too addictive. that and i’m poor. i can’t afford 15 bucks a month for a freaking game. final fantasy is always good, but i’m not a playstation guy…so i haven’t played one…that and i don’t even OWN a video game system these days…that doesn’t help.
it seems that final fantasy games are getting prettier…the graphics get better and better…but the games just aren’t as good as they were back in the day. call me nostalgic and wrong, but i’d like to find some rpgs that have pretty graphics and actually are fun to play like they used to have.
now, some underrated games i’ve played…and they’re for the nintendo, although they’ve gone through some incarnations through the years…
anyone ever hear of “romance of the three kingdoms” or any of those historical simulation games like “genghis khan”? they’re the ancestors of the recent total war games (which i loved…and i used the carthaginians a lot, too) and they took a lot of time and effort to pound through. i really wish they’d make more of them…and in english. that really helps.
by the way…here’s the ULTIMATE video game website…
http://www.the-underdogs.org/
you can spend WEEKS poking around and looking at things you never knew existed…look at their top 100 list. that’d make good fodder for a thread.
Minus the steering wheel, this is me. I’ve played the various Midnight Clubs incessantly, the Burnouts (“Road Rage” in 3 is freakin’ awesome), Need for Speed (though I stalled about fifteen races before the end of Underground when the circuits suddenly got insanely difficult; I recently picked it up again and am grinding to the conclusion), and the like. I’m also a big Civ-type guy; I’ve probably played Civ III more than any other single PC game. And back when I was on Mac, I devoted endless hours to SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, and so on.
I tried the Grand Theft Auto games, and appreciated the nonlinear gameplay and wide-open world, but I always get bored pretty fast. I’ve also played FPS-type games, and think they’re okay, but if I’m looking for action I prefer a racer. That said, I played a lot of Marathon on the Mac, though primarily in player-vs-player mode; I never bothered to actually complete the mission on any of them. I’ve also done Halo both competitive and cooperative with my brother, and thought it was reasonably fun, but I know I’d never stick to it on my own.
Nope, when I’m gaming, I either want slow, detailed resource strategy, or I want balls-to-the-wall blazing speed.
I should mention that my home setup involves a high-definition digital projector and a 108-inch screen, so racing games are extra cool. 
Hee! I still remember my old original EQ haunts, and it is a little weird how they seemed kind of like real places you could visit. Well, you could, if you take your character there.
I’ll be even more evil… ever see the friggin’ graphics EQII boasts?! I played WoW for a while, and yuck. This is my main character, setting off a firework (see her pretty horse? That’s new, I like to show it off - you can get different colour harnesses, or a pale horse instead of the cool black one I have. I picked a pink harness. I like pink.)
And this is my cutiepie halfling alt. (That’s her cat in the background.)They finally made halflings look less homely - they made them adorable! However, now the gnome females look like my ex-boyfriend, and no girl should suffer that fate.
Very customisable faces. I like that. I don’t want my character to look like everyone else. For example, here’s me with my dark elf guildies. I’m the short one. Would have been nicer to get a full face shot of all of us so you could see, but I think it’s still pretty obvious that we don’t all look the same. That’s my husband on the right, the half elf - looking like he doesn’t want to be seen hanging out with us dark elves. 
I’m evil. Hell yeah. 
Ah, crap. Here are two better pictures, with the shading turned on. My video card kaputted on me, so the other ones had the shading turned off. Much more impressive this way.
theirs a gay dream sequence? TEH SUXXOR!
Thanks for the tip! I just downloaded it and I know I will enjoy it, for those calm little moments when I want to be frustrated all to hell.
I need to make up for a lifetime without having ever played platformers. FilmGeek’s mention of Psychonauts led me to find it on sale online for less than $10. The animation style is creepy, but it seems delightfully twisted.
Amazon Floozy Goddess must have been around games since she was in the womb. I envy you all those early text games, but I’m not sure I could enjoy them at this point.
Anastasaeon, you had me going there for a minute or thirty. You keep this temptation up, Young Lady, and I’ll have to TP your home when I get to Seattle in a couple of weeks. But the imaginative settings and music in FFXI are unique in all games, I think. Sadly, there is no way to recover my character.
These threads just make me soooo greeeeedy!
what in the hell is this supposed to mean?
i’m not being hostile, i really don’t know what it’s supposed to mean.
Assuming you mean the leet, the whole of it means, “Really? A gay scene? That sucks.” I believe **Case Sensitive ** is being facetious.
brightpenny: I’ll give you the Charmin.