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.
OG DMC over 3? And which Prince of Persia?
I adore MGS3 but man does that game have problems. It’s kind of the first indication that Hideo Kojima never found a sub-menu he didn’t love with all of his heart. The amount of time you spend digging through menus and doing repetitive tasks over and over again is such a drag. It’s an amazing combination of thoughts and ideas that really needed an extra pass to figure out how to make that all more accessible.
I love the Bethesda open world template. I’ve been playing around with modding Morrowind and that game is still so messy, weird and wonderful. There’s no game like it, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Regarding other SP experiences, there’s too many to list, but BioShock is a standout from the modern era. Old school I’d go with Super Mario Bros. 3 or Mega Man 2.
The love for JRPGs is strong in me and though I want to say Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger or even Ogre Battle I have to go with Pokemon Sun and Moon.
For me the Zen of grinding is real so a JRPG is both therapeutic and fun for me. Make a Pokemon game that flips the story a bit and makes it interesting while making every other aspect of play more convenient and you have me sold. I miss the EV training from XY/Ruby/Sapphire but the exercise islands aren’t bad. Sun/Moon literally shaped many of thier mechanics around their setting, making so much of the play of the game more organic and immersive.
A pokemon game is my comfort food and the latest generation have been delicious.
I can see that complaint, but personally I’ve never had any problems with spending time in menus, in fact I think I prefer games that constantly require you to interact with menus because I feel like I’m engaging in the granularity of customization and making far more specific choices than pure action gameplay would allow for. I love the sense of mastery that comes with being able to navigate menus very quickly because you’ve become so familiar with them that they become second nature.
I also dont remember the menus being very repetitive/tedious. If you play stealthily, then you won’t have to use the survival viewer very often except after boss fights. Aside from that, things like camouflage are entirely dependent on how precise you want to be. A camo like olive will get you through most forest environments just fine, and when it comes to interior environments the emphasis is much more on staying out of sight lines than it is what color camo you use.
