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I talk more about them in their own sections, but...

• my favourite Sims games are TS1 and TS3 (I used to love TS2 but I think TS3's an improvement. TS4 doesn't interest me whatsoever)
• my favourite Fallout games are FO1 and FNV (I also like FO3 and FO4, but I don't rate FO2)
• my favourite Dragon Age game is Origins, by a clear mile! (I don't like DA2; Inquisition is fine)

My other favourite games:

• The Legend of Kyrandia 2: Hand of Fate (1993) (wiki) - I'm Zanthia's no.1 fan and have been since childhood. I'm gonna grow up to be her one day. This game is so funny and charming. Like most point-and-clicks, you can run it through ScummVM, and you can buy it bundled like that, too.
• Magical Drop III (1997) (wiki) - my favourite puzzle game of all time. If I can get mame working how I want it, it's gonna take even more years of my life. And I'll let it.
• Catz 3 (1998) (wiki) - my first website was a Petz 3 fansite. I still say that's the best Petz game (4 is pretty similar, I guess). I used to spend forever trying to breed the kitten on the cover; messing with the clock because pregnancies and growth progressed with the real days...

  I actually found neocities because it has somewhat of a Petz scene! But I haven't played for a few years.

• Pharaoh (1999) (wiki) - this and the later EP Cleopatra (2000) are probably still my favourite city builders. The art is wonderful and the scant voice acting is baked into my brain.
• Quake III Arena (1999) (wiki) - my favourite fps until TF2. I mostly played against bots - I loved all their stupid banter - but when my dad would have lan parties with his friends I'd fucking wreck them all. Fond memories ❤ I played as Hunter. I liked her cool headdress. I kind of had crushes on Mynx, Slash and Anarki (latter totally inexplicable in retrospect). I also really liked Orbb. I wonder who I'll like best now? I bought this in some steam sale or whatever and I keep meaning to start playing again! I started playing again! I miss these freaks (I don't miss with my fucking railgun though)
• Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004) (wiki) - or, as I call it and I'm pretty sure everyone does, Thief 3. The first 2 games were too scary for me, and I always mean to play them now I'm an adult I started playing again!

  I was proud of myself when, in my late teens, I finally managed to play through the 2nd half of the Cradle without screaming (too much). Oh my god... what a fun level design though. I don't want to say why, just in case I'm spoiling you, all these years later. It is so so so fun the first time, though! And later times too, but nothing tops that first moment when you realise what's going on!

  Also Garrett was one of my first video game crushes... I love his voice! And his terrible personality. I wanted to be Viktoria...

• Zombie Smashers X2: Punx and Skins (2005) (youtube) (wayback machine) - abandonware now, but I still remember successfully begging my dad to buy it for me. I so badly wish I could get this working again. Some day soon I'm gonna have to move to Linux and I guess I'll get more into Windows emulation at that point. Until that beautiful day, I just listen to the soundtrack. And remember how much fun it is to use the spines of your enemies as weapons against your other enemies :)

• Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) (wiki) - I haven't played this game for a few years (ha, 9 years according to steam actually), but it's my favourite GTA game. Though, I still haven't played 5. I need to play again. This is also one of my favourite dating simulators, alongside Dragon Age: Origins and Disco Elysium.

• Mount and Blade: Warband (2010) (wiki) - This is in my top 5. This game is sooooo fun and it has no real right to be. It's ugly as sin and really restrictive in some ways and I love love love it. So much that I preordered Bannerlord (2020), and I played once in the beta and once after early access release, but it sucks compared to ugly ancient ♥ Warband! ♥ NOTHING is as fun as you and some other hard as nails women (oh, and Ymira, but she's our protegee) riding around raising hell (or, well, restoring order in bandit-overrun villages... distributing agricultural supplies to war-torn areas... same difference)

  I love a game that lets me tell a sexist prick exactly what he can do with his opinion, and this is that game and more. ♥ There are some great mods - recently I've been playing my own version of this version of Floris, but for years I was a Silverstag girl. Mods for this game being basically overhauls is annoying sometimes but this is a game that's fun to play over and over again, so it's fun to try new ones anyway :)

  Maybe I should release my own version! It's mostly just adding things like female victory cries, better appearances for female heroes, more opportunities for the player to recruit more female soldiers...

• Civilization V (2010) (wiki) - I love this game so much. I love how easy it is to lose a whole day playing, but it's also easy to just dip in. I think I got into this game a few years late, because I was still happily playing IV and its expansions. But I've never even wanted to move on to VI. I always go naval in Civ games, it seems, and my favourite part of the game is up to around medieval era. I normally played Elizabeth in IV, but I play Dido in V :) And it gave me a minor obsession with Carthage.

  I have faint memories of trying to play the first or second game as a child and not understanding what to do at all. Actually, I was the same with IV, I think. I got it as a gift (from my husband?) and I spent my first 6-7 turns finding a good spot for my first city. Which then of course ate my settler. And I ragequit. But now I actually know how the game works, thankfully!

• Crusader Kings 2 (2012) (wiki) - My first exposure to this game was buying the first one, possibly in Hungarian, which I don't speak... whatever the reason, I didn't get it or like it. But I loved CK2; before the later patches, at least. I really liked doing my best to simulate a court, a real court, with families there falling in and out of favour, falling on hard times or having great strokes of luck - families who weren't major players in the realm, unless/until one of them ended up someone's oldest friend/shagging someone, or was made a bishop or even a real noble, or whatever. But at some point they made it so these "unnecessary" characters were automatically and unstoppably killed off, even in your own court (I could have dealt with not populating nearby/related courts, but my own?!) And no matter what I raised the limit to in the relevant config files, it just would not stop happening. So this game is on my list frozen in amber. When it was good, it was soooooo good!

  I had high hopes for CK3 before it became clear that the only real thing we were getting was cadet houses (did we even get that in the end?) I wanted a sequel to fix things like regency. In CK2, little boy kings would, with their own regent-mother's approval, sell her off as a concubine for trinkets. And, lacking her protection, promptly end up murdered. And to correct this didn't even require any new gameplay - just to fix what was there! I would love a similar game with more for female characters to do, but Paradox aren't interested in making it. I thought the representation of lovers/favourites was pretty dire, too, and I always meant to make a mod to fix that once development stopped, but by then the court limit stuff was a problem...

• Starbound (pre-release) (2013) (wiki) - The story mode in the real release, combined with all the content they removed, destroyed this game. But even since then (with the new BORING namegen) I've had plenty of fun exploring the galaxy with my first character: the ~adorable~ Floran, Space-stabber. (She's very intelligent and reasonable, for a Floran, but she also really loves to ssstab.)
• Stardew Valley (2016) (wiki) - I haven't played this for a few years - I've never visited the night market, etc. - but I really love it. The best fantasy element in this game is where the local people defeat Tesco before it kills their town. Oh, that and the junimos :) It has some problems, though. The big one is that Robin is married and you can't even ruin that. The second biggest is: Leah, Penny, Emily or Elliott?
• Kenshi (2018) (wiki) - Kenshi, Kenshi, Kenshi. It's the worst game ever. It looks like shit. It loads and plays like shit. It's set in a shit world full of shit people and makes you feel shit. And I LOVE IT!!!!!!! It's very hard to describe. It's like my dream mix of classic Fallout and The Sims, except not, because it's shit. It doesn't have the good points of either. It kind of has all their worst points, actually.

  Please, play it if you get the chance. There's nothing like it, but it's also the quintessential computer game.

  I say it's ugly, and it is, but it also has some stark beauty in its landscapes. I like it a lot. Play Kenshi! (Try not to lose any limbs! Or maybe do it on purpose! That's a strategy!)

• Disco Elysium (2019) (wiki) - I played this game recently for the first time but it's already a favourite. I missed out on it for a long time because steam lists it as a visual novel and I filter those out. It's not a visual novel, it's an rpg, and maybe the best I've ever played.

  6 weeks' digestion isn't nearly enough for me to be halfway normal about this game. Check back later.

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Games I didn't mention above but won't get their own section (for now): the Elder Scrolls series! (wiki)

I had two first introductions to this series. The first was playing what I was sure was a demo of Morrowind (2002) on a cd that came with a gaming magazine, close to when it came out (no later than 2003, I'm sure). But, I've looked into it since then, and Morrowind never had a demo. I was so sure it did and that that was why I never progressed past Balmora. But I guess it was a pirate copy, and I was just stupid! And/or easily distracted.

My second first introduction was watching a friend play Oblivion (2006) on xbox, in late 2007. He let me play his save a bit and I was just causing trouble in the waterfront district. I think his character was a vampire! I thought it was some kind of medieval-fantasy GTA pretty much. I couldn't really parse the advanced graphics (yes, go ahead and laugh) as being a game anything like Icewind Dale...

Of course, you can play Elder Scrolls games as medieval-fantasy GTA... and I sometimes do :)

And a few years after that I found out Oblivion was a pc game too. I don't know if it was only after starting it or maybe even finishing it that I realised it was the sequel to Morrowind, but I got and played that, too. The "full version" lmao, though I do still to this day tend to linger in Balmora...

I loved both a lot. And I was sooo excited for the release of Skyrim (2011). I did a special big playthrough of Morrowind and Bloodmoon, which I hadn't finished previously, to get me all Solstheim-hyped. And it worked I guess. I preordered Skyrim - I don't preorder things often - and I died when it was delayed by a whole day in the post and everyone else in the world was playing Skyrim and CATCHING THE SALMON IN THE RIVER and I was crying and sobbing and wailing

I've replayed all 3 games several times since then. I absolutely adore them, and Skyrim especially. With some mods for more flowers and trees (like this one), it's the prettiest game ever, and I can't get enough. I'm perpetually in the middle of a Skyrim playthrough. I've actually never finished Dragonborn, so technically I've never finished Skyrim...

I've never played the first 2 games and I don't really intend to!