Your favorite video game franchise

[Hyorinmaru]

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read my Vieo Game review thread.

The game play, mechanics and everything about the game is top notch. When i can replay a game 25+ times and not really get bored that's awesome.

My favorite thing though is how they all fit perfectly together. The playable characters from the 1st game are NPCs in the 2nd and the playable characters from the 2nd game are NPCs in Tales. The whole thing was done in a way that makes me believe Gearbox planned everything out from the start and just cut it into instalments.

If you've never played stop whatever non important thing your doing now and go play them all. GOTY if possible.

 

[Kodo Sawaki]

I like fantasy so:

Elder Scrolls- Todd Howard is maybe leeching too much of Skyrim but fact remains its golden. Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim(played that 3 so will keep on that) are giving all unique experience and gameplay as well as infinite modding has made it one o most popular franchises ever. You are bored with game? No problem, here is a mode that adds Game of Thrones weapons and dragons look like Macho Man Randy Savage. Not making that up, its real, o yeah

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Witcher- Your character is predetermined and maybe you cant be heel guy who just wants to see the world burn. But damnit, that story and characters are maybe best you would ever see in some game. You get attached to them and you really feel like your decisions determine fate of the world even if you may think its linear at times. 3rd is maybe best game I ever played.

 

[Jeff Deliverer of Mail]

NHL by a wide margin. I've played them all and spent a ridiculous amount of time on each one. NHL 14 especially, I wasted many a weekend just playing that game. Probably close to 5000 games played just on 14. I'm catching up to that with 16 and 17. The games don't change that much and I'm super critical of each entry, but I still buy them and love them. I just love hockey in general so that helps.

Second place is Final Fantasy. Loved the earlier entries right up to the wonderful Final Fantasy X. Then the games tapered off and didn't really have the magic of the originals. Final Fantasy 15 tried and was the best entry since FFX, but there's still problems. They really need to fuck right off with using time travel as a clutch, I'm getting really sick of it. It's like the writers for Final Fantasy sit around and say, "Hey! How can we advance the evil...whats that Zheng? Time travel??? Brilliant!!!"

No...just stop it.

 

[Khalifa]

Mine is Pokemon. From a young kid when I saw the first episode I was just hooked straight away. First game was Pokemon Silver and it's probably still my favourite game. Spending countless hours playing Pokemon Snap and eventually moving onto the Stadiums. I have taken a few couple year breaks from the series but I always come back and I've come to terms that I will play Pokemon forever, even if the last 3 generations have sucked to me(though I haven't given enough time to each title, I bought sun and moon last year and only about two thirds of the way into moon, haven't even started sun). I could play the original games or the remakes of those games forever and then the 3rd and 4th gen are passable enough and can be almost as enjoyable as the first two. Spinoffs like the Mystery Dungeon series were awesome and I look forward to the next titles coming out. Rumors are Kanto is coming back so I'm excited.

I don't think I would love Pokemon as much if I didn't play/watch it when I was around 5. I love Mario, Legend of Zelda, Halos and all the NBA 2k games but they will never take the thrown of number 1, whether I play it or not.

 

[tdmoon]

I very rarely play any video games but I am a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate series of games for PC. The first game(Baldur's Gate) came out nearly twenty years ago and has been followed by Tales of the Sword Coast and Shadows of Amn. The replay of these games is exceptional, with tons of different story lines. Every two or three years I go back to it and play it pretty hard. I recently bought the Neverwinter Nights game and have been playing that and would like to get the Icewind Dale series sometime soon as well.

As a very novice gamer, one thing I really like about these games is the AD&D rules system used. It's something I'm comfortable and familiar with and the near endless amount of story lines keeps me coming back. I bought a PS4 a couple years ago and still don't really know what to do with it, so anytime I get in the mood to game it is nice knowing I have a thief character ready to crawl dungeons and backstab the unwary.

 

[ShinChan]

Sleeping Dogs- Everything and I mean, everything was so good for me. It has sort of everything I needed in a game. You could fire. You could fight. And the controls were simple enough for me. I loved it so much that I continued playing it even after ending every mission.

FIFA isn't bad. That's more of a favorite sport for me.

 

[ISkye]

Pokemon was probably my guaranteed answer, but in the last 2 or 3 years it's become increasingly hard to enjoy. I've had a positive turn of events the last year or so slowly and I guess I've just been less depressed. It used to bring me kind of a nostalgia backed escape, but I've been needing stuff like that less and less as I've been happier and occupied. I think I'll always love it, but I could see me changing my answer even a year from now.

There is a huge gap between Pokemon and everything else, but Crash Bandicoot, WWF/WWE, and Dragon Ball Z could contend for sure.

 

[Dagger Dias]

For the longest time my answer to this question would have been Final Fantasy. I loved the older titles especially 4, 6, 7, and 9. From 10 onward the quality went downward very quickly. So the series remains one of my favorites for nostalgia but I can't rank it at the top anymore. At this point it's probably the Zelda series. There's no other series where I not only have played through just about every title but also found significant enjoyment of each. The worlds, the ever expanding history of the timeline in the franchise, the temples, the people you encounter, collecting items and heart pieces, and of course all the sidequests.

Runners up beyond those two series include Dragon Quest and Mario.

 

[SSJPhenom]

Mine would be Resident Evil.

I love everything about the Resident Evil franchise and I can play the main games in the continuity (save for 6) over and over and over again. My absolute favorite of the franchise is Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. I just love that game for the many different things you can do each time you play through it. For example; do you fight Nemesis at the police station or do you run away? Do you hide from Nemesis or do you face him? Things like that. 4 was an absolute wonderful game. It looked and sounded great while adding new game play mechanics as well as bringing Leon back as the main character. That's another thing I love about the Resident Evil franchise. Each game has a different protagonist and it's fun to observe how all of the different protagonist's stories relate and combine with one another. 1 has Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, 2 has Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy, 3 is back to Jill Valentine, 4 is back to Leon Kennedy, 5 is back to Chris Redfield, 6 was a clusterfuck with everyone involved, and 7 brings in absolute new characters but does a great job of tying them into the RE story. The franchise took a dump with 6 but 7 really brought it back to it's survival horror roots and I'm excited to see where the franchise goes from here.

Love me some Resident Evil.

 

[Dolph Ziggler's Gimmick]

Kinda of a tough subject for me.

Brief history of me and video games: Grew up around the 5th and 6th gen eras, spent my teens playing through some of the best 7th gen games, and nowadays I'll occasionally get the chance to actually have a solid playthrough of a game.

I've never been a constant PC gamer, though I had the chance whenever I was at someone else's place and they were.

I've always been a Playstation and Nintendo fanatic, XBox was always a tier below, and Saga was kinda there in the early days.

So that said, I decided to go with the God of War series. The games are immersive, fun, brutal, the story's great, Kratos is a badass, and the soundtrack is godly(pun not intended). The GoW games have never been anything too complex, but sometimes less is more and man, did they ever do it for me. Try playing through them as an early teen until past midnight, it's fucking amazing.

Honorable mentions:
Uncharted
Crash Bandicoot
Mortal Kombat
The Legend of Zelda
Kingdom Hearts
Sonic The Hedgehog(especially the Adventure games)
WWF/E SmackDown and SmackDown Vs Raw Series

 

[Wolf Pac]

Mortal Kombat.

I love the various stories of the Mortal Kombat universe, Outworld, and there are a range of great characters to play as and battlefields. Mortal Kombat is a combination of dark, scary, bloody, gore, entertainment, excitement and awesome.

Though they've only released two games, the Day Of Reckoning series is one of the best wrestling games I've ever played.

Spider-Man has also has some great games on various platforms such as the PS1, PS2, Gamecube etc.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

I'm a big fan of the FarCry series, particularly 3 and 4...

I don't normally enjoy FPS games, but FC4 in particular is a blast to play. I like that there's a proper story, rather than endless multi-player and that the stories are nuanced and your decisions feel that they carry weight.

FC4's mechanics are also off the charts in terms of fun... to put it in perspective, I unlocked "sticky C4" and managed to find a Rhino right outside a compound I was about to take down... strap C4 to Rhino, it ran into compound...explode Rhino which exploded a truck too and kill ALL the guards, winning the Outpost... This was before the streaming/video use of today but to this day I can't work out which is better, that I thought to do it or that the game makers thought to ALLOW you to take over a compound with an exploding Rhino...

 

[King Patrick Star]

WWE
I’ve been a fan of the WWE since 1989. I’ve loved every game the WWE has produced, all for different reasons. I don’t play as much as I used to, but I always get the games a year late, and arrange my Universe just the way I like it.

Batman Arkham
I’ve been a fan of Batman since I could remember. The Arkham series really makes you feel like you are the Dark Knight. Between the moves to the gadgets, the storylines and the twists, the suits and the huge cast of characters, the player would think he’s a millionaire. “It's billionaire, Vicki. Millionaires are so last year.”