This section says "Off-topic Discussion" below it, so I'm sure most people will understand that this is the off-topic section. In any case it's not a pressing or important issue, but if DavidC think it needs to be renamed he'll do so.

Coincidentally we were talking about favourite games recently in this topic. Here's a few of mine:

Puggsy
Tomba!
Braid
World of Goo
Vessel
Bastion
Team Fortress 2
Professor Layton series

I could continue but since you said no more than 10 that's enough. These are roughly my favourites.

My favorites are:

World of Goo

Call of Duty

Grand Thief Auto,Liberty city

Sonic the Hedgehog

Angry Birds

Bad Piggies

Caesar III

World of WarCraft III (Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne)

Pokemon (Ruby and Sapphire though there is only one difference in both of this)

God of War (I and II)

Dragon Ball Z

I also play a few online free games.

I can only play a few games as my graphics card has low graphics. Sometimes a few games work with lag and other doesn't.

My favorites:

World of Goo
Portal 2
Spore: Galactic Adventures
Caesar III (and IV)
Angry Birds
Age of Empires 3
Minecraft
Bad Piggies

And some other games.
I see you're a Caesar fan naveed

I am

I gave up on a level which needed more population or something,I deleted the game a year ago I think.

mine is...

World of goo

Little inferno

Minecraft

Angry birds

Bad piggies

Hey Puggsoy, I've played & finished the game named after you (Puggsy)
It was a fun little puzzler with some neat gameplay features. I liked the way you could use items to grab ledges and hoist yourself up. The game was relatively easy until some of those latter levels with really obscure things that aren’t immediately obvious. The hardest one was getting that round diamond thing from one plinth to another, what a pain.

Was this one of the first games you ever played? I can imagine nostalgia playing a big part in making it your favourite.

I'm sure you've read about the anti-piracy measure that stops you progressing, that was a shock. I thought at first it was the ROMs fault. But I found out you just need to disable SRAM on the emulator to get past it.
Isn’t it amazing how the whole game is only 1MB, it doesn’t seem possible! All the games from that gen seem to be around that size.

In the credits it says "Look out for Puggsy part 2 coming soon"; I bet you're disappointed it didn’t happen. MOM4Evr is a game developer, maybe he could buy the rights to it and get it made

Hee, hee. Funny to see people confusing "your" and "you're", even back then. XD
(Also, "the the levels of puggsy", but we'll forgive them since those kinds of typos are hard to spot)

I've never played Puggsy, but believe me, there's a lot of games out there that I'd like to see sequels of that just never happened. Commander Keen, Anachronox, Math Blaster, Aquaria... I think it's mostly nostalgia that keeps these old games alive. And complicated legal reasons keep sequels from ever being made. But to be honest, sometimes it's good to have a good game fade away into history than to have a slew of terrible sequels. That way, people can value a game for how great it is, rather than saying "Oh, this part of this game was better than the original, but the whole game just wasn't as good..." blah blah blah. A truly good sequel would be an entirely original idea set in the same premise as the first, which is, needless to say, difficult. Maybe even harder than making the premise for the original game. I'd rather be a game designer (or have more game designers in the world) who ignores the safety of making sequels in favor of making new and awesome games, as great as existing games are.

@Peter: Yep, sit was one of the first games I actually played often (along with Link's Awakening and Warcraft II). And man do I wish there was a second. Coincidentally, on another forum I frequent we're talking about old games that deserve remakes, Puggsy was my first one I actually emailed Traveller's Tales a few years ago asking about Puggsy 2 and the rights, and they said that while they couldn't just give them away, they did say "who knows, maybe one day you'll see a Puggsy 2". Don't know if they actually care enough to do so. Still, nice that they responded.

As MOM says though, not having a sequel can sometimes be a good thing. One good example is another one of my favourite games, Tomba!, which is a really fun and unique 2-and-a-half-D platformer. I actually only played the demo when I was a kid, and then finally played the full version a number of years ago. It's a really cool game, and while I was excited to discover there was a sequel, it SUCKED. I could point out so many things, but even though I only played the first 20-30 minutes of it I was completely disappointed. Almost none of the original game's charm was kept.

What I would want for a Puggsy sequel would pretty much be the exact same game, with extra features in the mechanics and probably more accurate physics (since that's possible nowadays). The graphics could also change a bit, but it would need to keep the same atmosphere: the same style of music, the same secret exits, the same use of items, and absolutely NO DIALOGUE. One thing I think sequels do badly is add something that they think the original needed while it actually ruins the whole character (Tomba! 2 gave him a little bug that talked for him, taking away the charm of Tomba not speaking).

Anyhoo I'm rambling on about this and I could for much longer but I'll just leave it be

@MOM, I never noticed the double "the", nice spot.
That Aquaria game you mentioned isnt that old, it was released in 2007/8. Anyway, I know what you mean, but sometimes sequels can improve on the original in every way if they understand what made the original great/popular. A lot of people might not agree with me on this, but I thought Halo 2 was superior in nearly every way, so that was definitely worth making. Halo 3 on the other hand was a disappointment, and I've not bothered getting any more of them.
Some games need sequels to fully master the original idea. For example, Mirrors Edge had a great premise but was flawed by a few annoyances. The game was crying out for a sequel to perfect everything, and finally after years of cancelation, its now in production and can hopefully be the game the original could/should have been.

@pugg, it looks like I know the next game I'll be playing I notice that Tomba! is by the same guy who did Ghosts'n Goblins, a notoriously difficult game. Have you (or MOM) ever played that? I've only read about it with people saying how they never managed to complete it.

You say about Tomba not talking, but having a silent protagonist isnt always easy. Maybe the designers needed him to talk so people could understand whats going on or to form a better bond with the character. One thing Half-Life needs is for Gordon to actually answer back and communicate with people, its a bit wierd for him to be mute the whole time, SAY SOMETHING GORDON!

One very good example that I'm currently playing is LoZ: Spirit Tracks, which is the sequel to Phantom Hourglass. PH had a couple of flaws, the biggest being that you in between every dungeon you had to go to a certain temple and go through all these rooms in which you had to sneak past massive Phantoms. There was a single halfway point, but apart from that you had to go through every room every single time, along with timer counting down (if you're not standing in certain areas). It wasn't game-crippling but it got pretty frustrating and tedious.
ST has a similar temple, but you go to a new floor each time so you don't need to go through all rooms every time. It also improved the rest of the game in a lot of subtle ways (e.g. you actually store letters instead of have them read to you once, so you can reread them). So in this case, a sequel can improve upon the original.

Anyway yeah, have fun with Tomba, it's a really good game. I haven't played Ghosts'n Goblins but I have also heard of it. Not sure how it's difficulty compares against the amazingly possible Super Meat Boy, but I just finished the dark world (not including the Cotton Fields) so I might have a go at it sometime.

About Tomba not talking: the thing is, the first one did it fantastically. He didn't talk at all and the story was as stable as anything. There was no reason to make a bug speak for him in the second. Then again it might just be that I hated the entire second game

@Peter: Yeah, I know Aquaria was recent. Only reason I brought it up was because it was a cancelled sequel, with such an insanely gripping cliffhanger that quite a lot of people were quite annoyed. And still are, hence why some friends are working on a sequel mod right now with Alec's blessing.

I dunno; sequels are always a two-edged sword. If people love the first game, they may or may not like the sequel, and if they dislike the first game, they may not give the sequel an honest shot. On the other hand, the sequel could fix a lot of the small problems in an otherwise terrific first game, but then it's almost like that should have been a bugfix release rather than forcing the general public to pay for it "again." I dunno; I guess I'm valuing originality a lot more nowadays than I used to. Even for terrific sequels, it always makes you wonder what other games set in other worlds that talented team could have made. But that's how it goes in game development.

Re. Spirit Tracks: there you go, that just shows they knew what they did wrong and improved on it, but they should really have noticed them in the first place.
The Zelda series seems to be a good example of how to do sequels, they've been making them for 15 years. I've only played one of them (Ocarina of Time) so I cant comment on the quality of the series, but they all seem to be highly praised.
What do you think of them MOM? You a fan.

Re Tomba 2, you said you only played to first 30 min. Maybe you should try the game again sometime and complete it, you never know, your opinion might change on it since the last time you played.

@MOM, I'd never heard of Aquaria (or the others) before you mentioned it, I just looked on wiki. Is the game worth getting? It looks interesting.

I must admit that I've never played Zelda. I grew up without video games, and Zelda is one of those games on my ever-growing list of classics I need to play sometime.
Aquaria is definitely a game worth getting if you've never played it before. Unfortunately, the developers have moved on enough to not ever put the game on sale, so it's stuck at $10 for the foreseeable future. And their (crappy) download provider plimus stopped working. But in any case, you can still download the demo or buy it on Steam. It's definitely worth a shot. There's a lot of community-created patches and a few really good mods. Sort of a Metroidvania type of game, I've heard (Yep, Metroid is also on my list of need-to-play games). Quite pretty and peaceful at times, and horrifying and insanely challenging in others. Quite different from any other game I've ever played.

Peter B wrote:

Anyone for COD

I will have another go at it, yeah. I guess I was just so excited that there was a second and I was too disappointed to try and appreciate any good points. I'm sure there are some really good bits in it, I mean it still has pigs as a main enemy

You really should play some of the games, it's one of those franchises that actually deserves to be as famous as it is. Personally I prefer the top-down style games, mostly because that's the style of pretty much all the handheld games, but I'm pretty sure that's also considered the most "classic" style. Ocarina of Time is one you've probably heard a lot about (and which Peter played), although that's in a 3D platformer style which I don't enjoy as much. I'm currently in the middle of the 4th dungeon in the 3DS remake (on my sister's 3DS), but I've taken a bit of a break.

I think he's serious. Personally I haven't actually played any COD game, but from what I've seen it looks like they're all pretty much exactly the same, possible with some changes in story and/or HUD, but essentially no valuable differences. It just looks like they're churning out sequels purely because people buy them (for reasons I can't see). As I said I haven't played it so I can't make an educated opinion but those reasons are why I generally don't like the series, and I think it's the same for MOM.

I knew he was serious, I'm just messing. The reason I mentioned COD in the first place was as an example of developers cashing in on its success with yearly updates. I dont play them either, the only one I ever got was the very first, and that wasn't very good.
I agree with you, as long as people are buying them, then they'll continue to churn them out.

mine are:

minecraft/tekkit

rayman

little inferno

zelda Twilight princess

[EDIT] how could i forget about BAYONETTA!!!

Lets see.....
the Wing Commander franchise (especialy WC4)
Minecraft
Portal 1 and 2
World of Goo
Little Inferno (beat it in one day)
Myst
Uru
Riven
Myst 5
Feed the Beast for Minecraft
Zelda
Pokemon
the Super Mario franchise

Soon to be added:

ox10c