I realize this thread is almost two years old, but I guess I'll post up. There is no way I can come up with a top ten, so I did my top five. The following fiver games really gripped me, and had my jaw dropping the whole time.
1.
Goldeneye - I imagine this game will remain the only FPS game I liked on consoles forever. The game just oozed class and attention to detail. It's visual quality was unmatched at its release. It's old-school level-based design allowed for tons of replayability in the single player game. For a reason I have never nailed down, this is one of the only games I have ever actually tried to complete on the hardest difficulty level, an endeavor that ultimately was successful. I also spent quite a bit of time trying to earn all the cheats. I never was able to get the invincibility one, and some others.
It also was a phenomenal multiplayer game and one at which I excelled. Some of the levels were bad for multiplayer gameplay, but others like Complex, Stacks, and Temple ensured that you would run into each other often. The different weapon sets made for different "feels" in multiplayer. I commonly played with pistols (one hit kill mode), SMGs, grenade launchers, and proximity mines. They all were great fun. I was so much better than my peers at this game that they always wanted to play me 3 vs 1, something they didn't realize gave me the advantage (it's a lot easier to find any other person than one specific person).
2.
Deus Ex - I've only ever beaten this game once, but I've tried to play through it more times than any other game. This game was unparalleled at its release. No other game seemed to have such an engrossing story or allow you the choice to play it different ways with all of those ways being potentially successful methods to reach the end. To date there have been a few pretenders to the throne, but nothing has come close to topping what
Deus Ex has done.
3.
Starcraft – Everyone loves this game for its slick multiplayer. The races are vastly different from one another yet they are all equally powerful (well, I could make an exception for the Protoss... espeically in
Brood War they have an edge).
But I loved the game for its single player campaigns. It wasn't so much the levels or even really the gameplay, both of which were quite good; I loved the game because the original story was so phenomenal. I think Tassadar's sacrifice to defeat the Overmind was easily the most powerful story moment in gaming that I'd ever experienced.
4.
Half-Life 2 - Que always says this game feels to disjointed, that each level has a different gimmick. He's definitely got valid points in that regard. People say the game has no story. I completely agree. But despite these flaws, or maybe even in an odd way because of them, I absolutely love this game. I was heavy into gaming at the time, spending hours every day playing
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, but this game broke me out of that trance for three solid days. I faked sickness for three days so I could play this game. I played it for hours and hours each day until I beat it. I just couldn't stop. I think part of it was the level design, how the levels always seemed to end in the middle of travel to the next part rather than completing the goal of that level. In any case, disjointed or not, I couldn't get enough of this game.
5.
Wolfenstien: Enemy Territory - This game sucked up a couple years of my life and was paritally responsible in one failed relationship and a lost job. I lived and breathed this game every day for two years straight. There were only ever six maps released, but those six maps were incredible. I loved the class and objective based gameplay, how each class plays an important role in any team's success.
It helped that I lived with two guys that loved this game as much as I did. We would all play on a public server together and just dominate as a nice little three man team, since teamwork was all but impossible to find on a public server.
I like a lot of other games, but they are all on a tier that is separate from the aforementioned five games.
- Silent Hill 2
- Ico
- Shadow of the Colossus
- Okami
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
- Freespace 2
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
- Metroid Prime
- Shenmue
- Soul Calibur
- Star Wars Rouge Squadron II: Rogue Leader
If there was no release year limit,
X-COM: Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense would easily have been on this list. Probably a few of the
Space Quest games as well.