The best play is/was always with friends. We had riots in the bit-tech office playing L4D, HL2DM and Trackmania
Played pretty much only Age of Empires (1) for a few years when I was little. Used to wake up early to play it before going to school. Probably have a ridiculous amount of hours clocked on that. Tales of Symphonia. 2 playthroughs, one after another. In total hours played probably not that jaw-dropping, but in Shadow of the Colossus I spent more time just wandering around the Forbidden Lands after finishing it (well, with a savefile right before the final colossus), than actually playing the game itself. Could probably still draw a pretty accurate map by heart. Have the habit of playing through the first half of Crysis every few months. Definitely more than 10 playthroughs. Finished it just once - don't know any other game which fluctuates in quality so much. Spoiler That helicopter level does not belong in a finished game by a self-respecting developer Witcher 3, which I'm playing right now, is probably the first game I'm considering doing a 100% run for. Might end up on this list later.
My Top 5 on Steam are... XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Within, 307hrs - Will NEVER get bored of this Skyrim, 214hrs - At least half of that time was probably spend mucking about with mods XCOM 2, 135hrs - Damn fine sequel Fallout 3, 125hrs - On balance I much prefer New Vegas to FO3, but I've had FO3 longer (NV just misses out on the top 5!) Elite Dangerous, 121hrs - Played this a lot when I bought a Rift DK2... All-time games however... Final Fantasy VII, PSX - Easily one of my favourite games of all time Sonic 1/2/3, Megadrive - By far and away the best Sonic games ever made Fighter Bomber, Atari STe - I was never very good at this game, but I played it a hell of a lot - dat keyboard overlay tho...! Stunt Car Racer, Atari STe - The graphics on this game were amazing to me at the time
Binding of Isaac - 214 hours Borderlands - 385 hours Terraria - 546 hours Borderlands 2 - 614 hours But I don't think any game will take up more of my life than Battlefield 2 did - I had over 2000 hours on my main pub account, close to 400 hours on my scrim/clan account, and probably another 200 hours on my 2nd account after taking a break for a year. I was literally getting up an hour earlier than I needed to, just to get a game or 2 in before leaving for work... not healthy! The funny thing is, over the past year I have probably totalled less than 100 hours of game time over all games I've played (and a good 60-70 hours of that was on X-Com 2). I won't before investing money into the hobby again until I'm confident I can actually get some time to enjoy it... Though, I WILL FIND TIME for Borderlands 3.
Unreal Tournament, Everquest, Operation Flashpoint, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, C&C Red Alert 2, Sudden Strike 1 + 2, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Dungeon Keeper 2, Heroes of Might and Magic V, Call to Power 2, Elder Scrolls III Morrorwind, Neverwinter Nights, Freelancer, Anno 1503 and thats just naming some of the worst offenders in the consumed all my time back then category, I might have had a problem lol (according to society, personally I don't regret it). Talking of more modern games: Arma 3, Stalker, Fallout New Vegas, Minecraft, Nuclear Throne, Yakuza 0, Horizon Zero Dawn, Mad Max And now Divinity Original Sin II is heading right down the same path of unhealthy obsession.
The first game that got me really hooked was Elite back on the BBC B Micro when I was still at school - I dread to think how many hours I played that. Nothing after that really till the Championship / Football Manager games - almost 5000 hours in total since the 2012 version (no idea how many hours on the versions before - will be an awful lot as well) BF2 was a major one for me - the demo got me back into PC building. Pretty sure that I was over 3000 hours on that. BF3 - 621 hours BF4 - 1207 hours BF1 - 127 hours (only play it when my mates won't play anything else - it's improved, but still crap) GTA IV - probably over 400 hours on this. I still play it from time to time Nothing else with that many hours until I got The Division. I'm still playing this and have actually increased my hours per day of recent - up to a total of 837 hours now.
This was Neptunes Pride for us. People went into stinking moods for days. I would give my left arm for a 1:1 remake with upgraded engine.
Descent Fallout: New Vegas Final Fantasy VIII ...do Minesweeper and that Pinball game that came with some versions of Windows count?
Counter Strike - Mostly 1.4 / 1.5 but a little bit of the modern junk on Steam. Wouldn't like to guess how many hours I've put into that. Gothic (1&2) - Has to be my top RPG, it was just perfect in my mind. I know people knock it these days but when it came out it was fantastic. Still is. GTA 3 - When it came out it was the game. Used to upgrade my PC to play it, trying to get better quality, higher frame rate. I had a 32MB GFX card in there at one point. I have it on my phone now and it runs better than it ever did on any PC I had. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Super immersive, huge map, great gameplay. Dodgy ballistics but they sort of came good in the end. Played it until I'd been there and done that. Morrowind - Again, tonnes of hours into this game, thanks to the ginokopod Bethesda map. Plenty of annoying little side quests to keep you travelling forever, great game. Ah, it's been a while, in case you can't tell!
What? This was an honourable mention for the "games you just kind of gave up on" thread... First half was fun enough, but went downhill quickly once it got all alieny Never mind giving up on the game, this is the game that prompted me to give up on PC gaming entirely, and move over to consoles.
All command and conquer except the last one. Eve Online for three years. WoW for three years. Diablo, Hellfire, Diablo 2, Diablo 3 and Reaper of Souls. They keep adding new content to D3 as well, love it. Stardew Valley. Started my second game so I can do the Joja route for achievements. 150 hours in and I reckon I’ll double that easily before boredom. Used to do Duke Nukem 3D death match til the cows come home.
For me its Day of Defeat:Source, still playing it regularly. Limited number of servers, but 3 or 4 well maintained with a good crowd.
Call Of Duty 2 and 4 with well over 5000 hours on each. Elite Dangerous with I don't even know how many hours, but seeing as I have been to Beagle Point twice on the PC, was the first PS4 commander to get there and back, I have put in close to probably 2000 hours or more between the PC and PS4. Titanfall 1, loved that game on the Xbox One and PC, played it for hours everyday until another game came along and ruined my social life what little there was of it to begin with. The Division, put hundreds of hours in to that on the PC, Xbox One and PS4. The big one though for the last 3 years is Destiny on the Xbox One and then late last year and early this year on the PS4, I have put a stupid amount of time in to that game from completing weekly activities with each character and then deleting them, levelling them up again and doing everything again over and over and over again, getting in from work at 5pm and not coming off it till around 10pm 5 days a week, and then putting in from 7am till 11pm on the weekends, yeah that game killed my social life completely. PUBG is getting to be one of those games but from the 24th of this month I think Destiny 2 is going to be my time sink for a LONG time.
Games played to death and still playing to death Total War: Attila 570 hours Total War: Rome II - Emperor Edition with Radious mod 332 hours The Elders Scroll V: Skyrim 627 hours
Dota 2 - 3000+hrs (Dota 1 probably near as much) Counter Strike (1.6 - GO) - ~1500-2000hrs total Total War series - 500+ hours Civilization series - 500+ hours (hated BE, dislike 6) C&C Red Alert 2 (+Yuri) - Easily 500+hrs, prob near 1k hrs C&C Generals (+Zero Hour) - Same Age Of Empires series - ~2000hrs World Of Warcrack - If my maths is correct, then over the course of Burning Crusade to Cataclysm, I must have clocked over 9000hrs. I was hopelessly addicted to it, spending all my time I was not at work playing the ****ing thing. PUBG is my current addiction, with around 250-300 hrs
Final Fantasy VIII (8); I've completed at least 30 playthroughs of this, from non-Junction challenges, to no-Levelling, to do-everything-no-matter-what runs. Command & Conquer (the original); one of the few games I had in the early days, played it obsessively. Red Alert 1 supplanted it because of skirmish mode in the end. Civ 2; when I wasn't playing C&C, I was playing this. Final Fantasy X; no-Sphere Grid, max-out-Sphere-Grid runs completed... took so long. Disgaea 1-5; don't get me started. On Steam; Civ 4/5; can't be bothered to log in to check, but over 800hrs
Oh man I played that to death, using the MG42 as a 'melee weapon' never truly gets old and Colmar is one of the best maps in any FPS I've ever played.
Mass Effect Trilogy - played the first one ~13 times through, the second one ~8 times and the third ~4 times. Ohh, many, many hours on this back in the day. Playing it on 4K is...interesting, mainly because everything is so damn small! In fact, I think the first single player missions have problems because maps are smaller than the rendered area, making it jump around like a mad thing.