Virtual Adept

Zonk on Slashdot writes:

Via GameSetWatch, an article at The New Gamer talking about comfort games. These reliable, fun titles are the old favorites you consistently look to for amusement and solace after a bad gaming session, a bad day, a bad week. From the article, with the author’s comfort games: “Mega Man 2 - This Capcom classic has been with me since I was a kid, and I know it like the back of my hand. I’m sure that, if blindfolded, I’d somehow intuitively be able to maneuver through the levels, but I’d much rather be able to view it in all of its 8-bit goodness and remind myself of the good times.” My current top five would have to be Super Mario World, Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, God of War, and Civilization IV. What are yours?

This made me really think about the kind of game that stays on my harddrive forever or the kind of game I’ll keep buying again and again if it comes out on new formats. I think Zonk kind of missed the point, considering almost all of his list were games released within the last few years. I hardly see how those games could be considered “comfort games” since they haven’t been around long enough. I would have to say that this kind of game is pretty rare for me, I typically do not have time to go back and replay older games I’ve already beaten before. But there are a few.

5. Empire Deluxe for Windows - the classic pure strategy war game. You have a very abstract view of the battle, with little icons representing tank divisions, infantry divisions, fighter squadrons, etc. Part of the fun is doing random maps and exploring it. Before this Windows version came out I played the old text version for DOS that was a port of the original Unix version. Your units were letters of the alphabet.

4. Doom - one of the first FPS games, and probably the most influential of them all, Doom was a great game with a killer soundtrack and cool enemies. It’s still fun today, I just played some of it again the other night on Xbox Live Arcade. I think my favorite version of this, though, was the ZDoom that added jumping and a few other nice features. Any game that gets remade as much as this you know is good.

3. Master of Orion II - While some may think me a heretic for prefering the second iteration of this classic turn-based space-themed strategy game, this is the one I was raised on and I just love it. I love designing new ships, I love the turn-based tactical space battles, and I love the overall strategic map and messing with economies and learning new technology and all that stuff. I think this game has never been off my hard drive for more than a few months since it came out.

2. Planescape: Torment. This is the best story driven RPG I’ve ever played. An amazing story and the game changes depending on how you play it which keeps the game fresh. I have beat this game three times. There is just something about the setting that draws me in, it is a very unique and haunting place. Just writing this post makes me want to replay the game again.

1. Diablo II + Lord of Destruction - I probably have sunk literally several thousand hours into this amazing time waster. If I had spent all of the time I played D2LOD doing something productive, I’d probably be a millionaire by now. This action/RPG with roguelike elements is as addictive as crack. The whole point is to level up your character and most importantly find really cool phat lewt to equip him or her with. The graphics and art were good at the time but very dated now but that doesn’t matter. It’s still a compelling experience. This game is far better online when playing on the closed realms on Battle.Net.

I’ll also list some also-rans that didn’t quite make the cut but still get re-loaded on my hard drive or have been there for a very long time:

Neverwinter Nights - This has never been uninstalled, still play it, mostly user mods and things. Fantastic game with tremendous replay value. It didn’t make the Top 5 because I never did beat the original story.

Might & Magic IV/V “World of Xeen” - is almost always on my hard drive, I love replaying this gem of an old school party based RPG.

Half-Life - I still play this from time to time. I’ve still never seen the ending, I always quit after about 20 hours into it. Still, the part of the game that I do like I really like and it’s a lot of fun. Someday maybe I’ll even beat it.

Unreal Tournament series - Have had a version of this always installed since the original UT. Right now I have UT2004 on there, and it’s always fun for a quick bot-game if I feel like winning, or jumping online to get my ass kicked if I want a challenge. One of the perfect “I have just 15 minutes” kind of games.

Freecell - I play this game all the time, when I’m waiting for something on my PC and the PC is too taxed to load up a more eye-candy-friendly type game. Really fun solitaire game that you can actually win most of the time if you’re clever.

So enough about me. What are your top 5 comfort games? Tell me in comments!