Metroid & Metroid Prime- I like sci-fi and love the atmosphere of this series from its music to its sound design to its character & enviornemental design, its "find a power up to continue exploring" gameplay is addictive, and the Prime games were stunning artistic and technical achievements, as was Super Metroid. Every installment controls very well and despite being an action game it mixes things up with its well constructed enviornmental puzzles and good platforming.
Zelda- Blends puzzles, exploration, and action almost perfectly every single time, and is always lovingly crafted. Memorable characters, huge rich worlds, great dungeon designs, and Ganon's incarnations are usually imposing.
Super Mario- Tons of content, superb level design, and just perfect platform gameplay. When you eventually know a level well enough to sprint through the entire thing, getting hidden mushrooms and power-ups without missing a beat, you just feel happy.
Final Fantasy- It varies by the game, but usually very well written epic stories and characters, usually intricate, rewarding battle and upgrade systems, always stunning art and cutscenes, and almost always beautiful music. And some of the mini-games are ridiculously addictive.
Half-Life- Wait, you mean instead of plopping me in a maze and making me go round and round to find keys shooting everything that moves, an FPS can actually be a modern cinematic experience? With envioronmental puzzles and well laid out levels designed not merely to annoy with little alcoves that allow mobs to pop-out and run straight for me over and over again? And it can have a non-throwaway plot not read entirely on terminals, but one that unfolds within gameplay creating a satisfying atmoshpheric whole?
Gunstar Heroes \ Super Heroes- Great bosses and lots of em, Fast-paced well controled action gameplay, neat little moves and touches of animation, lots of explosions and eye-candy. No one can push a system to its fun, frenetic limits like the little teams at Treasure.
Metal Gear Solid- From the moment the guard followed my footprints I was hooked. Add great bosses and well thought-out themes to the innovative hide and seek gameplay and you have a new genre and a great series.
Dark Cloud- The first was insanely addictive and charming and I really liked the town building and weapon crafting mechanics, and the second is a worthy rival to zelda with its rich characters, massive content, and outstanding presentation.
Ninja Gaiden (New)- Tightest controlling action games ever made, bar none. Challenging gameplay and stunning graphics (the first Ninja Gaiden for the XB made my jaw drop from the first screenshots, it hit the floor when I actually saw it in motion).
Age of Empires\Mythologies- The pseudo-historical\mythological settings, the diverse finely balanced civs in Age of King and Age of Mythologies with awesome unique units, the entertaining campaigns, the good graphics, and the voice samples of all things (especially the priests) endear me to this series.
Elder Scrolls- I've never seen a series where there are a billion things I would praise and a billion things I would change in the same game, but that just means there's 2 billion things to pass judgement on within each of these games. Huge is an understatement.
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