I never romanced Ashley.
'cause the game won't let you romance a smoking crater.
I didn't really care for either of them, but Ashley was clearly prettier so RIP Kaiden.
In no particular order:
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is simply the best RTS. Sure, there's a huge learning curve even compared to other RTS games, but in this case, that's because there's just
so much stuff to work with and the maps can get friggin' huge. Unlike other titles in the genre, everything's set up to minimize the amount of micromanagement you need to put in: you got one type of resource for building forces, which you need to control map space for, and another that you need to power everything and also build forces, which can be generated anywhere. Both are streamed to storage automatically, because personally directing all your raw material movement yourself while there's battles tryna be waged upon your doorstep is some tedious, bothersome business that really oughtta be delegated elsewhere. Wanna set up an automatic patrol route for your sentries/radar/subs/scouts? No problem; you're just a few clicks away from having them circle around however convoluted a path you like. Heck, you can even have them automatically do it right out of the factory, for as long as the factory keeps making them, ad infinitum - cause not only can you queue units at 1, 5, or 100 per click at will but even infinite production loop is an option as well, making infinite batches of whatever mix and proportion of units you set it to make and sending them wherever you tell it to send them - which itself could be an LZ for some automated transports to run your preset pick-up/drop-off points. (Yeah, Br0merdinger wasn't expecting a ground assault on
that air base, now was he?) As far as I'm aware, these kinds of features don't appear in other games of the genre even today, though it's now been over two decades since
Total Annihilation first introduced them.
Europa Universalis IV is the actual king of replay value - no contest. It's also Best In Class - no contest. (Civ is to EU as wine coolers are to... hmm... I'm thinking, maybe Jameson.)
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt gets my pick for Best RPG World. I'm pretty sure I've already said more than enough as to why, though, so I'll go ahead and refrain from elaborating any further. (Besides, I wouldn't know where to stop.)
Overwatch gets my vote for shooter, I'm gonna go ahead and make that call. Is it actually the best shooter ever yet? Well, I dunno about that - but it's the best one still being widely and actively played right now. Also, it's just a fun take on FPS in general.
Super Smash Bros (pick one): I'll second this vote. It's what 2-D arcade style games should be: early on in life, you and your friends get together in a basement and play Smash Bros while staying up and eating junk food. Later on in life, you and your friends get together in a living room and play Smash Bros while staying up and getting wasted. Used sparingly, it pretty much never gets old, and remains at least a pretty good fallback to having any actual plans for the evening (beyond meeting up and eating junk food, and/or getting wasted).
Honorable mentions: Conker's Bad Fur Day, the Mass Effect trilogy, and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, for their place(s) in RPG history. 007 Goldeneye, Halo: Combat Evolved, and Halo 2, for their contributions to FPS history. Guns of Icarus (RIP) - shame it didn't get more players more quickly, cause I feel like getting on and finding at least a few hundred other people online would have, in itself, been enough to get a lot more people logging onto that game. Rocket League is in many ways the Smash Bros of its time, and is one of the few games you can have a proper split-screen festival with on a PC - but its replay value is just not at the same level, because there's only so much of driving go-karts into giant soccer balls that you can do before it gets really repetitive. DOOM really nailed its attempt to bring back the old-school shooter and make it anew, except that the multiplayer is pretty meh overall.
And that's about all the mentions, I think.