Weekend Open Forum: What's your favorite video game franchise?

Dragon Age
Diablo
Witcher
Dark Souls
Dragon's Dogma
Basically, every good dark medieval fantasy RPG that is not first person.
 
Halo for me. Been playing multiplayer Halo with my friends for 16 years now with no end in sight. The quality of the franchise under 343i has gone down but for my money it's still the best multiplayer FPS of its kind.
 
Deus EX - The First Action RPG I played on my new G4 CUBE when I was a kid.

- Great plot\story - Loved how the dialogue and gameplay choices you made could give you different outcomes

- What stood out the most was how you could could customize your character for stealth and not kill a single person or just nuke everything

- You might be able to fly to the sun and back in the amount of hours I played

- Still have it installed!!!
 
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Have to say Call of Duty. OK, now cue the haters.......

I know, I know.... but it was fun up to the last 2 or 3 releases. Though I am looking forward to WWII.

I do own every release of COD from the beginning. So, I have to admit, this is why. Other games I own, maybe version 1 and 3 but not the whole franchise, like COD.
 
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Fallout.
Elder Scrolls.
Jagged Alliance.

Mods for the above - some are brilliant. Anticipating Fallout: Project Brazil (just renamed Fallout: New California) which is due out "any day now"..

I like Stalker, but wished there were more 'story'. I like Witcher, but a bit too hack/slash. Ditto for Dishonored.
 
This is similar to the WOF I did a few weeks ago about what is the most time you have spent on a video game, but this question is harder to answer. At least time played is a concrete and quantifiable metric. I've put in about 1000 hours into Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls franchise is a favorite of mine, but I'm not sure it is THE favorite.

I loved Mass Effect 1-3, but Andromeda turned me off. I had such high expectations for it and was really disappointed, especially since I pre-ordered (should have known better, but bought into the hype).

I've played and liked every Grand Theft Auto title including the top-down original, but you know what? I don't think I have ever completed the main story in any of them. There is just too much other fun stuff to do.
Saints Row games never appealed to me when the franchise first began and so I overlooked it. Then one day I was bored and wanted to play something new. I hit up the PS Store to see what the freebies of the month were. One was Saints Row IV, which had already been out a couple years. I thought, "What the heck?" Since then I've tried to get my hands on every game in the series. I love the sophomoric humor and the over-the-top personalities. The only one I haven't played is the first one because it seems it was an Xbox exclusive.

Borderlands has never disappointed me. I even liked TellTale's Tales from the Borderlands.

Nope. Can't do it. I have no favorites. I love them all.
 
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In terms of logged hours, CS:GO is one of my favorite games. Aside from that, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings holds a special place in my collection. It's a timeless classic at this point that I own on CD. It ran on a Windows 98 computer for awhile before being upgraded to a Windows XP machine. It still ran on Windows 7 reasonably well after some minor user patching.

I gave in though and picked up Age of Empires II: HD edition on Steam so that I could properly play the game on my laptop with a 4k display. The original version on CD was limited to 1280x1024 and that just didn't cut it for me to play in a small centered window or ridiculous stretching. A great game and definitely challenging at times, but that's what keeps it interesting.
 
Mario 64 through super mario galaxy 2

devil may cry series

assassins creed is pretty good

left 4 dead series

resident evil 1-3, code veronica x and that one on ps1 where it's first person view. wasn't a fan of 4-7.

crash bandicoot

ratchet and clank

jak and daxter

metal gear solid of course

I could go on for a long time but you get it :p
 
Fallout. Spent over 5000h on the series. Balldursgate, postal, battlefield and few others are good but just remembering fallout 1 & 2 back in the day, nothing comes close to the experience.
 
Honestly, I love the Shantae franchise. It's still a solid metroidvania platformer, has explored many different game mechanics without detriment, has a lot of humour with the occasional fourth wall breaks and most importantly, is a lot of fun.
 
I'd've been tempted to go with Rainbow 6, Tomb Raider and Splintercell but none have really been consistent so it'd have to be Half-Life.
 
Final Fantasy. I love every game(yes im a fanboy) lol currently playing FF XIV ARR an im loving it!(FF X is my alltime favorite though)
 
Half life...now if Gabe would get his thumb out of his fat *** we would have Half Life 3
 
I'll agree on Mass Effect. The first trilogy was great, even taking into account the ending in ME3. Andromeda was very enjoyable, graphically impressive, but story wise, it was lacking a bit of depth. It was missing the 'awe effect' that the first trilogy inspired. It still has great potential though.

KOTOR 1 and 2 were great, back in the day. I'm still hoping for a revival of that someday.

The old original Need For Speed series, TNFS, NFS2SE, NFS3, 4 was better skipped, NFS Porsche Challenge and Most Wanted (The first one). After that I started losing interest, with all the bad console ports.

Halo gets a honourable mention too. I love the story, and I'll play all the games, but re-playability for me, is low.
 
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It's difficult picking a single favorite franchise.

On one hand, everyone loves Grand Theft Auto. On the other hand, not *everyone* loves Mass Effect, but it's still pretty loved by tons of people. Then there's the Batman Arkham franchise, Thief franchise, The Witcher, Legacy of Kain, Prince of Persia Sands of Time trilogy, Deux Ex, Assassin's Creed, Gothic franchise, Splinter Cell, Dishonored, Dark Souls, Crysis, Half-Life, STALKER, Bioshock, Dead Space, Metro.

It's hard. I'd say ... The Witcher trilogy is the best franchise for me, followed closely by Mass Effect, Prince of Persia, Thief and Gothic.
 
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