Actually... I guess it is NWN2 that I'm playing now. :yep:

Allso fidling about with NWN2 atm.

Here are my games that ate up alot of my time and made the most profound impression on me. The type of games that after years you will still get an itch to replay them in a vain attempt to recaputure the initiate rush you felt when you started playing them.

1) Baldur's gate 1 & 2 and related expansions - CRPG are my favorite genre and this remains as my favorite series I have played.
2) Master's of orion - This was one of my first 4-X games I played. Even though the sequel had more cool things the original made more of an impression on me.
3) Wing Commander III - Heart of the Tiger. Too think that space combat sim genre is totally dead now.
4) Civilization II - My Second 4-X and this game was highly additive for me. I played III and Alpha centauri but those games didn't hold my interest as long as Civ II did.
5) World of warcraft - Hate to admit this one, but this was my first MMORPG and it literally stole about two years of my life. Most addictive game I have ever experienced. I think the action/reward model would have made Ivan Pavlov proud.


If it were a top 10 I would have put the following next.

6) Harpoon - I would sit for hours on end watching the time compression tick off waiting to find and destroy that last Kilo sub to achieve total victory. Yes, I'm quite aware I have no life.
7) Aces of the Deep/Silent hunter 1, III, and IV. Basically I have always loved submarines and these games all feed my virtual passion to sneak around searching for unsuspecting prey. These games all have the same great mechanics that keep me coming back for more.
8) The Total war series, great marriage of real time tactical and turn strategic combat.
9) Deus Ex - Sure it had simple AI FPS opponents, but the storyline, characters, and atmoshpere is what made this game rock.
10) Red Baron - The first flight sim that had a career.

About Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale/Neverwinter

Baldur's Gate 1&2 had a really great storyline and tons of nice side-quest
Icewind Dale 1&2 had a good story and way better tactical combats and progression than Baldur, but it was a very lot more linear unfortunately as there was a lot less side quests

Both games series are unfortunately not very replayable once you complete them fully with all side quests, as you have no real influence on the story.
You could always restart with totally different characters or party to see how the dialogues/combat may change, or using higher difficulty level (like the totally insane Heart of Fury difficulty in Icewind), but basically there is no more real surprise.

On the same engine, Planescape Torment had a complex story that was a bit more replayable as according to your choices, it could lead to different ending, but again once you played it all over there is very few that attracted you into replaying it again and again.

I guess the problem comes that Baldur, Planescape and Icewind are not very moddable, you can't create whole new adventures, whole new maps, complete new series of quests etc...
But for you first run at those games, they are really awesome and you enjoy every minutes of them.

Now Neverwinter Nights, that's a completely different thing.

what i didn't liked was that you sadly don't manage a party, you are just alone and can get some hired henchmen, and your influence on the story is null.

But worse, the story for me was not really good with lot of uninteresting development that you can't prevent due to the extreme linearity.
Playing the long 1st chapter of the original campaign is just plain boring, fortunately it gets a lot better in chapter 2 ... if you can endure the very boring chapter 1 enough to complete it.
The expansions are a bit better but overall it remains a very lot less interesting than Baldur/Icewind/Planescape as a story.

But Neverwinter is way way superior to Baldur/Icewind/Planescape on the replayability factor, because unlike the other, Neverwinter is totally moddable, you can create whole new universes, whole new stories, whole new quests, have additional user made content, and even maintain "gaming worlds" on multiplayer servers that can be used like real "paper rpg" with a dungeon master and his players.

There is then a very lot user made campaign modules and other nice additions available for download that can keep you busy for dozen of years with some having very interesting story and complexity.

Neverwinter for the default content is far inferior and less interesting than Baldur/Icewind/Planescape, but in term of modding and so replay value potential, it is superior without contest.

How much i wish Baldur/Icewind/Planescape were moddable to the extent of Neverwinter.

1. Deux Ex
2. Mafia
3. The Darkening
4. Apache Longbow 2
5. LOTRO

Games for me are like music - there is no "best", there is only what I like and what I don't. So, my top five are:

1) Silent Hunter III

2) Sid Meyer's Pirates!

3) Silent Hunter

4) Aces Of The Deep

5) Tomb Raider

SH4 isn't on there simply because I can't play it on my PC. Also loved European Air War, with reservations. Want to play Over Flanders Fields, but can't afford to by any new games right now and it needs CFS3 to run.

Actually SHIII and Pirates are all I play right now, except for a remake of an oldie called Wizball.

Hey Robsoie , I played several mods for Baluder's gate that added content to the game. One was called the big picture mod which combined several smaller mods together. But your right Baldur's gate was not intented for user made modules like NWN.

I played NWN and NWN2 and a few user made modules. I felt the combat was somewhat lacking in the NWN compared to Baldur's gate. I guess that is why NWN didn't hold my interest that long despite having a huge amount of user made content.

Another few to add to my list:

Mirror's Edge - I wasn't sure about this after hearing mediocre reviews, but man it's awesome, imo it's one of them games where you really shouldn't listen to reviews.

ArmA Armed Assault + Queen's Gambit - It took me a while to get into ArmA, but I found it to be very immersive once I had. Just a shame it's so unstable, it uses more resources than any other game I've played. But what's with the fugly reload anims and incredibly annoying engine sounds? :doh:

Portal - Need I say more? Except that the cake is, of course, a lie.

My top 5

1-Dangerous Waters

2-SH3

3-Harpoon 3

4-Halo 2

5-Half Life 2

Also Lock On and Doom 3 :yep:

1.- Aces of the Deep
2.- IL2 Sturmovik
3.- European Air War
4.- Medal of Honor
5.- GTR

Close --- maybe 5 or less...
 

1. Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (with all the expansion aircraft) - LucasArts
2. SH3 (I have SH4 and the UBoat expansion, but I definitely prefer 3!)
3. Silent Service - Microprose (this was a REAL crowd pleaser! Everytime I had a party, people'd be vying for a seat at the computer!)
4. a couple of Star Wars things also done by LucasArts many, many years ago
5. ???

1. Medieval 2 Total War
2. Silent Hunter 3 (with mods)
3. Dangerous Waters (with mods)
4. Falcon 4.0 with Open Falcon
5. Steel Beasts Pro PE

Combat mission series are also worth mentioning as well as IL-2 Forgotten Battle + Ace expansion pack and Pacific fighters.

In order of how much I enjoyed them:

1. Morrowind *
2. Gothic (the first one)
3. Star Trek Bridge Commander
4. Freelancer
5. The Dig

Morrowind was the first and only game I ever did a narration on. Played the thing three times, and the third game took 2 years and 9 months to finish because of the storyline.

BTW, Bridge Commander caused me to generate a ton of screen shots, but I have to say that by the end of the game, I wanted to KILL the first officer.

Zayphod - bridge commander?

Ever try Klingon Academy? Now that was a GAME - and a heck of a storyline too! Loved the fact that the actors did the actual vids for the game too!

Now thats a game I would love to see redone - and with real moddability added!

A group of friends and myself even based a "Galactic war" game off KA - though it struggled (or maybe we did) - it was a blast. A strategic ability too would be fantastic.

1. Shogun Total War
2. Ageods American Civil War
3. Panzer General
4. Grand Prix Legends
5. Silent Hunter III

Close Combat 2 was a close call.