What are the most addictive games you've played?

Nope, no ghosts here :-D

It's been ages since I've created a thread here on System Wars, man. Anyway, I've played some management games these days and realized I really, really, REALLY like those games. So much, that I'm pretty sure I've spent the most time in my gaming career on that genre. And some of them are from the other genres that contain management features. Even though I wouldn't say management games are my favorite. Strange.

So, these are the most addictive games I've ever played:

1. Football Manager
2. RolletCoaster Tycoon 1,2
3. Software Inc. (insane amount of depth)
4. Cities: Skylines
5. Pro Evolution Soccer

What are yours?

Btw, you don't have to name 5 of them. You can put only one. Or six. Or whatever.

There have been singleplayer games I have been addicted to in the past. Stuff like Donkey Kong Country, Max Payne and Half Life are games I've finished more times than I can count

But it's mostly Multiplayer games where I would feel the urge to play daily:

• Company of Heroes 2: 1,400 hours
• Red Orchestra / Rising Storm: 700 hours
• Day of Infamy / Insurgency: 600 hours
• Left 4 Dead 1&2: 500 hours
• Battlefield franchise: 1000+ hours

Playing these with friends has been insanely fun, but there are also times where I jump in alone, or meet new people. Half my friends list on Steam are people that I played Left 4 Dead on expert with.

World of Warcraft is the worst for me - I didn't even like the game, but for some reason id want to log on to make my character more powerful...

I stopped playing shortly after Burning Crusade came along and made all previous grind for nothing. Trash mobs in new zones were dropping items better than some of the high end raid gear people had spent countess boring hours doing raids for, my god were WoW raids so boring compared to EQ1.

It got to the point where one day I logged on and run countless laps around Shatrath City while thinking of what I could do that was actually fun: maybe go farm some essences, maybe go do some Arena PVP etc.- but every time I thought of something, I had a feeling of dread at the oncoming boredom id get from doing that pointless task and in the end it all boiled down to me asking myself ...why?

I didn't enjoy it, everything was for nothing, farming all day for gold to buy items that are worthless when the next expansion comes out, doing the unbalanced Arena PVP to get owned by a group full of rogues or mages. I realised that I paid a monthly subscription since the game released to play this crap and I didn't know why. So I stopped.

Never thought Company of Heroes 2 had such a good multiplayer. Btw, is L4D MP still alive?

The latest would be MHW. Almost 1000h in and its not even an mmo. If the game had a challenging endgame, with new content every two weeks or so, i'd be playing it still, and daily. Too bad that all we're getting is a new monster once per 6 plus months an a reskin once per 3 months or so. That's just nowhere near enough to log in on a daily basis, and have things to do.

Something like Civilization 5 comes to mind... I put some serious hours into that game.

Civilization V, I don't know how many times I said: "just one more turn", and then I realize that the Sun is rising, and several hours have passed.

Recently it was Red Dead Online. But I stopped playing a week ago because I cannot log in to the game anymore. To fix the issue I have contact my ISP and I don't wanna go through the hassle.

Other than that I got sucked into a lot of mobile games but the worst one was Marvel Contest of Champions. It was really hard to give up on that game but eventually I got sick of it and gave up on it.

The PVP in the Souls games also had me playing for a long time. And most souls like games are generally addictive and hard to put down even after you finish them. Dark Souls Prepare to Die edition was the one that I played the most only for its PVP.

And the last most addictive game I've played was the Sims 3. Wasted a lot of time living a virtual life.

Definitely the witcher 3 and more recently the sims 4 I don't even know why because I don't think its a good game on console.

Oh it was insane. I always stuck to 2v2, 3v3 or even 4v4 modes. I always liked having someone on my side to rely on :)

The multiplayer was insanely balanced. It launched with just 2 factions, but it provided so many branches to go for.

Everytime you were being attacked you could find the perfect counter, and there was always something you could do.

This made for some very balanced & very tense matches.

I'm pretty sure L4D2 is still alive and kicking! But honestly, I would suggest looking into World War Z, it's a more modern take.

I'm also very excited to see Back 4 Blood.

• Europa universalis 3
• Civilization 4 & 5
• The Sims 1
• Starcraft
• Counterstrike 1.6
• Destiny
• DoTA - played the mod a lot in my college years, the base game... eh
• PES/FIFA - manager mode
• Monster hunter - been playing since Frontier
• Persona 3 - Each playthough around 80-100 hours and replayed every version of this game multiple time

Unreal Tournament 2k4
Quake
Halo 2
Team Fortress 2
Pokemon
Advance Wars
Civilization games
Warcraft 3
Melee

In recent years, I have like 300+ hours in Dragonball FighterZ, 150+ in Guilty Gear Rev 2, and I'm probably going to get more in those games. Going to be adding a bunch in Tekken 7 and Unist, so fighting games in general are crack.

Beat 'em up - Streets of Rage 2

Fighting - Street Fighter Alpha 2

Hack & slash - Ninja Gaiden

MMO - TERA Online

Platformer - Sonic 2

Puzzle - Tetris

Racing - Need For Speed: Underground

RPG - Final Fantasy VII

Shooter - Resident Evil 4

Sports - SSX Tricky

Disgaea

• SSX tricky and 3
• Burnout Revenge
• Battlefield 2
• WWE HCTP
• Medal of Honor Allied Assault MP
• F.E.A.R. SP and MP
• Def Jam fight for NY
• Counter Strike : Source
• Max Payne 2
• Battlefield Bad Company 2
• Mortal Kombat 2, UMK3, MK9, MK11

league of legends

souls series

nioh 1 2

sekiro

Everquest 2 is definitely the game I spend the most time on, played it from launch and until sometime after the second or third expansion dropped! Unfortunately it followed in the vein of WOW and vented to make everything casual with epic chests dropping everywhere( master chests) and rare crafting dropping like candy... a combination of that and growing real life obligations made me give it up! Great game though!

• Street Fighter V - 973 hrs on record
• Total War: SHOGUN 2 - 560 hrs on record

Much of that SFV playtime will just be idling in the background though to save hoping through menus.

Destiny 2, Bloodborne, SFV, Tekken 7, CoD:MW Remastered, Battlefield 1, that should cover this gen.

Overwatch

Divinity Original Sin 2

PSO comes to mind, and just recently showing up on Mighty X1X, PSO2. :P

Warcraft III was definitely the first game that got me truly addicted; would wake up early just to play an hour before catching the bus for school. Second game would be Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The third game would be League of Legends. For single-player games; the GTA series comes to mind. Vice City was absolutely amazing.

Haven't found a game lately that got me hooked as much as these games.

1. Titanfall 1

2. Forza Horizon 3

3. PUBG

3. Two Point Hospital

4. Tetris

5. Halo MCC

6. PacMan

7. Asteroids

8. Ridge Racer 6

9. World of Warcraft

Insanely addictive games.

In recent years, was pretty hooked on Gears 4 Horde for awhile, that's about it.

In highschool played a ton of COD but idk about "addictive"

As a younger kid , Pokemon.

Plenty, but I'll start a more recent one - Divinity 2. I played it during quarantine and again, maybe it was because of this but in all fairness no other game during this lockdown did this. I seriously played 4-5 hours straight of this game despite having to work early. It's just so good!

A few for me would be:

• Chrono Trigger
• Chrono Cross
• Diablo II
• Diablo III
• any Halo multiplayer
• any Gears of War multiplayer
• any Call of Duty from Modern Warfare on multiplayer
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
• Final Fight
• Contra III: The Alien Wars
• Super Castlevania IV
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

I remember being addicted to WWE smackdown vs Raw gm mode. Spent hours upon hours just simming matches and creating rivalries.

1. League of Legends

2. NGU Idle

3. Trove

Hmm, addictive games,

1. Crusader Kings 2

2. FM

3. GTA Online

4. Civilization

5. WOW

I've played a lot of CSGO

probably too much

• Factorio
• Civilization

i have a tattoo of him raziel from soul reaver

When I was young, I have for sure play a lot some games such as CIV. But I don't remember at all the amount of hours.

Most recently, I say COD and other FPS. I think I have like 1200 hours in all COD in 10 years.

Online stuff - Jedi Outcast & Academy, Age of Mythology, Halo 1 & 2, CoD 1, AAO, Transformers: FoC, etc.

Replayability - SoR, Sonic, Mega Man, NiGHTS, various shmups, etc.

The Ori games: in terms of moment to moment playability, they’re insanely addictive. Player feedback through tight presentation and gameplay makes playing a blast at every moment.

Galak-Z: great controls, enemy AI, and procedurally generated levels keep things always unpredictable.

Tetris, STALKER.

• Animal Crossing: New Horizens
• Ori and the Blind Forest
• Hollow Knight
• Dues Ex :Human Revolution
• Destiny 1/2

Overwatch

Mainly mmorpg way back in the days Ultima, Daoc and the likes.

Still playing those, mainly GW2/DCS/Wthunder, but no more addiction, and endeless sleepless nights.

1. Runescape

2. Maplestory

3. Mabinogi

4. Team Fortress 2

5. Left 4 Dead 2

6. Warframe

MMOs and F2P games really are my weakness. Left 4 Dead 2 is the only exception. I played a lot of Left 4 Dead 2 because of the modded servers that made things fun and fresh.

Stardew Valley never gets boring. I'm really keen for their next game.

Just competivie FPS in general is very addicting.

I don't know what L4D on expert is like on PC, but on console its fucking insane, and I loved playing that game on expert with a few friends, but they weren't hardcore enough and gave up, while me and another guy did all the levels on expert together, its so hard with just 2 people but insanely fun.

Was there "jesus" places on PC in L4D???

Basically if you lobby'd up to play expert you know the people that would join you were up for the task, or they would try at least.

Once every blue moon there was this guy who joined, shotgunned everyone (because of insane damage in expert) and then left. But most of the time yeah, you could team up with nobody's and everyone knew what they were in for.

Difficulty included: no downed state on the special zombies, so straight to the next locker room. So the tanks and witches were hell.

You'd save up the healthpacks the entire game, only use them on those critical moments when someone was already downed twice and had his screen turn black & white.

And everytime you'd hear the sound of a horde coming, your heartrate would intensify hahaha.

Games I've been addicted to over 30+yrs of gaming.

Forza's of course

Skies of Arcadia, I finished it at least 30x for an RPG that's massive

Grandia 2, Mystaria, Shining Force 2, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Early Mortal Kombat's, Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco GP 2, F1 97, Sega Rally, Just Cause 3 & 4, RE Code Veronica, World Series Baseball 2, NHL Powerplay 97, Jungle Strike, Road Rash 2, Streets of Rage 2, Black Belt, Aztec Adventure, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Die Hard Trilogy, Le Man 24hr, Virtua Racing, Exhumed, among many, many, many others.

I need to stop or i'll be here all night lol.

I will say that the addiction has died down a lot in the last 2 gens, and I can go weeks without playing anything, where as the gens that had Sega consoles I can remember doing a few 24 gaming sessions, ah the good ol days lol.

The games I keep playing and find them addictive are:

• Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order
• 007: Goldeneye (nostalgic for obvious reason)
• Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Halo: Combat Evolve & Reach
• Mass Effect: Andromeda
• No Man's Sky
• The Last of Us
• Killzone 2
• Icey

wow how could I forgot this genre. I used to be such a huge Harvest Moon fan (which what inspired Stardew Valley). The PS1 game Back to Nature and the GBA remake I have so many hours into it. Cannot wait for the Switch Remake, hope they port it for PS4 as well for the nostalgia purposes (and for trophy hunting).

Getting too close to a witch that would chase you is intense, I remember always trying to one shot her with the shotty (its doable even on expert) and would fail most of the time, my character would be able to run a marathon after the amount of times I had to run.

We found the Harvest to be the hardest level.

Also did the PC version have jesus spots in the game???

Couldn't get through Fallen Order, I just wanted to throw the controller out the window because you can't skip cutscenes. As for MK 11 thank **** you could skip the cutscenes other wise the story mode would have taken 5hrs to complete and only 1hr of that spent actually fighting. The Krypt is what saved that game.

@i_p_daily: what do you mean with jesus spots exactly?

I though you meant safe houses or those closets xhere you could revive people, haha :p