1. MGS3
2. Metal Gear 4: Peace Walker
3. MGSV

Honourable mentions: Metal gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid, MGSV: Ground Zeroes and Sons of Liberty

1. RimWorld - I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game care so much about making the player feel like part of the story; just all around amazing. Damn near everything is configurable and for anything that isn’t the modding community probably has a fix for (and then some).
2. Terraria - Certainly has its quirks and annoyances, but I like that it has sandbox elements to be creative and do whatever, but also always feels like the game has an objective to work towards. I’ve probably played though at least half a dozen times between solo runs and multiplayer games with friends/ family and I just keep coming back to it.
3. Stardew valley - it’s just cozy with a slight hit of nostalgia. I have childhood memories of staying up entirely too late monopolizing the TV/ GameCube playing Harvest Moon and this scratches the same itch. Beyond that you can feel the love and attention to detail that the dev has poured into the game. Plus the skill ceiling is pretty low, so even my non-gamer friends/ family can play and have a good time.

Honorable mentions:

• Factorio
• Slay the Spire
• FTL

In no particular order, and without adjusting for recency bias:

Single player

• Hollow Knight
• Undertale
• Outer Wilds

Multiplayer

• The Finals
• Awesomenauts*
• YOMI Hustle

* Right now the game is in a weird state where the original company who owned it went backrupt, and the game is in the process of being revived by a different company. In the meantime, the already low player count got lower. On top of that, there’s two versions of the game: an old version that used Steam matchmaking (as the matchmaking server went down when the game original closed); and what had been the current patch, being accessible on a beta branch, which currently has issues making it hard to actaully play a match.

1. Minecraft - Was my absolute childhood and I met so many good friends and learnt a lot throughout my time playing the game.

2. Skate 2 - The controls are perfect, the vibe is amazing, it’s just one of my overall favourites.

3. GTA V - The first R rated game I played. Both this game and Fallout 3 were massive inspirations for me focusing on 3D environments as a Game Dev student.

Honourable mention to Little Big Planet and Rollercoaster Tycoon Deluxe; both of which absolutely shaped my childhood

Fallout 2/New Vegas

Terraria

Pillars of Eternity 1-2

But please ask me in a hour and probably will give you 3 new favs.

1. Portal
2. Disco Elysium
3. Drone Perspective

Forever stuck in mid to late 90s JRPGs, if I had to pick 3

Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy Tactics Suikoden II

Nier Automata Deus Ex GOTY (and Human Revolution) Red Dead redemption 2

1. TF2

Its just so good, played it a fair bit when I was a young teen and picked it up again a couple years ago and haven’t stopped playing 8 - 20 hours a week. Best game ever imo, never gets old.

2. Garry’s Mod

Easily my favorite game when I was in middle school and high school, and it still holds a very dear spot in my heart and memories from that era of my life. Excited for s&b

3. Cyberpunk 2077

I remember seeing the teaser trailer when I was a preteen and was so hyped, took like 10 years but when it did come out I had covid (which was lucky for me because I didn’t feel that sick and I got paid leave for 14 days to play the game). Played on PC from day 1 and beat the game In a week or so, it wasn’t that buggy imo. I loved the story and I encountered minimal issues during my play through, and only one that caused me to need to reload a save.

Other favs probably rimworld, gta 4, stanleys parable

• Doom/Doom II. They somehow lucked the hell out on mechanics, speed of movement, ease of modding etc. John Carmack did us all a massive solid and got the game released under GPL license only four years after it came out. As a result of the incremental improvements enabled by that, the game keeps my interest to this day.
• TIE Fighter. I used to be a massive Star Wars fan, and this game was just the best thing ever for a detail-oriented kid. I memorized the stats of every single ship and for the rest of time was pissed whenever someone got it wrong. The missions truly require you to use your brain and every advantage at your disposal (in-flight map; reinforcements; wingmates; ship characteristics; good tactics). 've’never come across a better flight sim to this day (although the Freespace series comes close).
• Diablo II. I was 15 when this game came out. I rollerbladed all the way across town to buy this game without my parents knowing. The clerk almost didn’t sell it to me because he thought I looked too young but in the end he did me a solid. The game was worth it and then some. It consumed the rest of my teenage years. Digital crack.

Games that deserve to be in the top three but don’t fit:

• PlanetSide. I still remember being in shock watching a hundred people shoot at each other without massive rubberbanding etc. It totally redefined what was possible in a game. I was obsessed with making loadouts for every situation. TR forever!

• Dark Souls. They totally nailed the feeling of being in some sort of dark fantasy fever dream. So beautiful, and I love how the lore is relevant to how you feel trying to overcome the adversity of the game. First half of the game has some of the best world design I’ve ever seen.

• World of Warcraft. I flunked out of college because of this game. I think it was worth it.

Ultima IV
Phantasy Star Online
Destiny (not Destiny 2)

Going by favourite as “Left the most lasting impression on me” it would have to be:

1. Monster Hunter World

2. Crosscode

3. Outer Wilds

Top 3 is hard. I’ll start with the first three that came to mind, in no particular order:

• Witcher 3

• Star Control 2

• Monkey Island 2

But there are so many that I could have listed instead.

The Commander Keen games are amongst the first I remember playing, I loved those and played through them so many times.

Baldurs Gate 3 was such a masterpiece, it probably could bump W3 off that list.

Although, Ultima 7 was the first RPG I played where I became properly immersed in the story. The world, the characters, the way the mystery of the main story unfolds. And it is actually a really good jump-in point for the series as it’s set a couple centuries after number 6.

Fallout 1 also could easily make the list. I loved the way such a small and intimate quest for your vault unfolds into something bigger.

Outer Wilds

Mario Galaxy 2

UFO Enemy Unknown

1. Satisfactory
2. Stardew Valley
3. Baldur’s Gate 3

Not that they’re the best games, but they’re definitely my favorites. Though if I’m being honest there’s a large gap between number one and number two, and anything other than Satisfactory feels like it could move in the top 10 depending on my mood.

So I guess if I’m being honest with myself it’s more like
1: Satisfactory

~massive gap~

2-∞: any other traditionally well-liked game, depending on my mood on a given day