Sweet! I’m a little thrown back by Ace Combat having its own worthwhile story. I must have really written this series off as just another Flight Combat Arena. Thanks for the recommendation!
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It’s hard to point to a single game cause I enjoy different games for different reasons. I don’t really value anyone particular reason above the others.
Today I’d say it’s LoZ:Breath of the Wild. Tomorrow it might be Thief 1 and 2. Just last week it was Deus Ex.
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This is my top ten whether or not you include multiplayer games:
Metroid Prime
Mega Man X
Mega Man Legends 2
Wind Waker
Demons Souls
Journey
Majora’s Mask
Metal Gear Solid 3
Bloodborne
Super Mario World
Each of these games have significantly shaped the way I think about gaming, and are wonderful realizations of a creators vision.
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I loved the N64 with its countless classics , Goldeneye, Turok, Donkey Kong and lots more I can’t remember the names but can picture.
Banjo or Mario though as the platformer of choice .?
I loved Banjo more if I’m honest as it was made by the gods that were RARE at the time and couldn’t really do no wrong in regards to games.
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Off the top of my head, I can think of a few.
Sunset Overdrive is one of the few games where simply moving around the environment was half the fun. It’s like a giant game of “The Floor is Lava”, and I could visibly see how much better I was getting by how efficiently I was getting from A to B.
Depending on the day, I’ll waffle between Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back or Crash Bandicoot: Warped as my favorite technical platformer.
Portal and Portal 2 are also puzzle games that were thoroughly satisfying from start to end: the combination of humor and technical execution is second to none.
I also have a loose mental association with Spec Ops: The Line and Bioshock Infinite, as they both left me contemplating exactly what had happened throughout for days after I’d reached the credits.
I’ve also 100%'d Psychonauts a few times simply because I enjoy the world and concept so much.
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I didn’t premeditate this list, it’s completely off the top of my head… Although I do often think about these games as some of my favorites of all time.
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I like that this game’s open world is built around a series of tools that can be used to creatively solve its encounters and problems the whole way through, rather than built to try and act solely as a setpiece. Mind, it is a setpiece on top of all that. I also like that the limitations put on the player, such as degrading/breakable weapons and only regaining health via foods or resting, makes it a constant affair of planning – similar to any decent survival game. It’s a nice mix between constant puzzle solving, artistic beauty, and elegantly designed struggle that had me hooked. Plus, I played it on the Switch, hardware which not only allows something of this technical magnitude to exist, but to make it much easier to have with me wherever I go. Game absolutely consumed me this year.
Rez Infinite - Built around the idea of meshing gameplay with music, the game is relatively easy to play but has a lot of really neat tricks that blend your actions to the music that’s playing. It also offers up a fun light sprinkling of narrative to kind of make its abstract visuals make more sense than being a really trippy playable visualizer. Area X is also a stunning update to the original’s format, allowing a slight bit more freeform gameplay and even more dazzling abstracted visual effects, and built around an even more dynamic soundtrack (Area X alone is comprised of several different songs mixed together, rather than featuring one single continuously built track). Add VR immersion to the package if you have it available to you, and I can’t think of anything that feels so… satisfyingly artistic to me. There’s also optional arcade-esque skill challenges buried in there if you need a more hardcore goal to pursue, but I personally don’t factor it into my enjoyment of the package.
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt - I love the two protagonists and all of their supporting characters and I like that the game offers player input on their reactions to things but doesn’t really feel extremely atonal or inconsistent, even if you react differently to different situations, the gameplay is serviceable (I personally find it fun but I can easily detect how it might come off as weak to others), the world is gorgeously detailed and expressed in the game’s engine. I personally wept at journey’s end with the Witcher III, the ending being one of the most emotionally striking and satisfying I’ve ever experienced in a videogame (and I admit, I’ve cried at the endings of videogames on more than one occasion before I played Witcher III). It has exceptionally great writing for a fantasy RPG, and it came off to me feeling like its world had far more at stake to me than most other RPGs I can personally stomach to play. And let me clarify the last bit of that statement – I have a hard time with RPGs, I have a difficult time with their layered mechanics and I generally am attuned to getting satisfaction from a more immediate reaction to my inputs in games (I just want to react more immediately to things rather than consider the various systems that will be impacted by my play decisions), I have a difficult time reading through endless journals and text and keeping track of all the details and then the systems on top of all of that. Witcher III streamlines a lot of that for people like me and I really appreciate it, and it tells some of its most compelling details in ways beyond journal entries and text documents littered across the world, despite the game still having plenty of that, too. It may read as an “RPG for dummies” to some of the more dedicated fans of the genre, but for folks like me, the easier interaction with the game’s world and robust storytelling presentation made it an unforgettable experience.
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Too many to post honestly! Most games I play are single player, aside from the Rocket League’s of the world.
From a combination of nostalgia and just being genuinely good games, Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9 and 10 are ones I always revisit.
More recently there has been Red Dead Redemption, The Last Of Us, Bloodborne, Breath Of The Wild, DOOM, Nier Automata and probably more that I can’t remember right now. The one connecting thread, I think, is that they were each made with a consistent vision, theme or goal. I’m also amazed at how a lot of my favourite games have been made in recent years. It’s been a good few years for single player games!
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I just took KotOR for a spin last night on my Xbox One and hot damn is that game still incredible. It certainly ranks as one of my favorite games ever, and it’s single player!
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Kentucky Route Zero is just so incredible, I’ve played the first four episodes again and again and it has such an absolute handle on its tone its so good
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Championship Manager Italia
Bard’s Tale 2
Suikoden
Xenosaga
This year has been pretty great for sp games for me I must say. Zelda and Golf Story in particular. But those four above have always stayed with me over the years (outside of Bard’s which I never found a decent way to replay it)
The comedic timing of GladOS recovering her clapping subroutine while falling down with Chell is one of my most cherished memories of that game. It was so funny and bizarre. So yeah, I’d also list Portal 1 and 2 as some of my favorite single player games.
There have been dozens more, but recently, I think Hollow Knight takes the cake for me. I didn’t think I could ever love an action/adventure game as much as I’ve loved Demon/Dark Souls and Bloodborne; I was dead wrong. And it doesn’t stop at scratching that itch while being casually gorgeous. It also gets so many things JUST right. The movements, combat, npcs, music. The exploration.
And I honestly think it’s one of the most well-crafted world-building I’ve ever seen.
How two to three people managed to create so much content, most of it ranging from really good to stellar, is beyond me.
Mass effect 2 rates pretty highly for me just on the character interactions alone. I also really like the story and cast of characters in Dragon Age 2 even if the gameplay’s not that compelling.
I really need to play KOTOR, I tried on PC but I like playing games with a controller. Is it backwards compatible on 360?
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For me it was probably Outlast. I played hours and hours of that game in order to get all the trophies, and it was also my first attempt at speedrunning a game. In the end I wasn’t even scared of the game anymore, It was just hide-n-seek, but still fun.
Metal Gear Solid 3 came out over 13 years ago, so not exactly recent. But it is definitely the definitive linear single-player game of the 3D era. It is one of the few games which delivers equally in terms of game design and storytelling. In that regard, I think it set a bar that has yet to be surpassed.
I really need to play KOTOR, I tried on PC but I like playing games with a controller. Is it backwards compatible on 360?
It is indeed.
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I’m a real sucker for open-world exploration, so my top game is obviously … Endless Ocean. Played that for 870 hours, wrote the FAQ, made friends all over the world on the back of it. Love the game to bits. There’s one guy who is even more nuts than me and has been playing it for upwards of 3,000 hours - discovering things even I didn’t know were there. It is the spiritual predecessor to Breath of the Wild (which is coming up fast behind it).
Other than that my greatest hits are the tightness and perfection of Portal, the bonkers otherworldliness of Grim Fandango, the evocative historical breadth of Eternal Darkness and the endless variations on a theme that is Lemmings.
That’ll probably do for now!
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I love narrative-driven games such as KotOR and Mass Effect 2. Having played games since the early 80s, I still suck at them - so I tend to dial down the difficulty and play games for the story. Other all-time favourites are Portal 1/2, Baldur’s Gate 2 and Planescape:Torment. I also had a brief (in weeks, not in hours) and intense love affair with Stardew Valley 
I buy a lot of big, open world games - but seldom finish them…
100% Limbo. That game resonated with me more than any game before and since. Its aesthetic, its tone and pacing are all so masterfully crafted it still genuinely gives me chills to this day.
The Mass Effect trilogy, by far, is my favorite single-player experience. I got so attached to my personal Commander Shepard and her crew, and all their various relationships, that I’ve played through multiple times (making the same choices every time) just so I can hang out with them all again.
Beyond that: SimCity, especially SimCity 4, which I still play all these years later in lieu of more modern city building games; Fallout 1/2/New Vegas (and 4 is getting up there for me as well, in a bit different way); Stardew Valley; Life is Strange; Gone Home; Star Trek: 25th Anniversary; the various Civilization games.
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I play many games and many games I like and love to play. I will mention only 5 game name what I like on single player:
1- Resident Evil 4.
2- Devil May Cry.
3- Tomb Raider.
4- Price of Persia.
5. Assassin’s Creed.
