Tough choice but ruling out free games (if we include emulation I'll be here all day) I might go with Invisible Inc. It's a turn based stealth game with lots of different characters to try, each leaning into different strategies. While it's possible to knock out or kill guards, it's discouraged because it increases the alarm, so you have watch patterns and use tricks and diversions to achieve different objectives. I have 200 hours on it and it's on sale rn for $5. There are other games I have more hours on, but not as much enjoyment.

Runner up: Heroes of Might and Magic IV. I have no idea how many hours I have on it because I bought it before I had Steam, on a compact disk (in fact it's not even on Steam, I think it's abandonware?) and have come back to it so many times over the years. It's kind of a timeless hidden gem, lots of ways to build your characters and your armies, lots of different challenges, and the writing is fun and memorable. The style is a little different from the rest of the series and I never got into the others but the new one (Olden Era) is promising (and has a free demo that's really good).

Worst for me are the Total War series, maybe Napoleon or Rome 2. I remember when the first ones came out and there wasn't anything like it. In the year 2000, the ability to fly around the camera ordering troops around was incredible, and of course the ninja assassination clips were absolutely peak. But since then, every one pretty much follows the same formula, and it feels like if you've played one you've played them all. It's not that they're bad games, I just couldn't get into them.

Neverwinter Nights, hands down. I played it 20 years ago and until recently I was DMing a weekly campaign using it, but I would guess I've put between 20,000 and 25,000 hours into it over the last 26 years. Honorable mentions for Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which I'm currently playing. (Spent all day today playing it, in fact.)

Least enjoyment? I pre-purchased Batman: Arkham Knight and quit it after one hour, so that's an obvious choice.

Excluding free/infinite, I'd have to say my best is Morrowind, probably, but it could also be Sim City (Classic or 2000), Starcraft, Half-Life/TFC, Team Fortress 2, Super Mario World, or Mario Kart.

Worst is even trickier, as I'm very careful about my game purchases (excluding Humble Bundles that are technically infinitely bad because hours played is zero, but don't count because I paid to get some other game and/or donate to charity). It'd probably have to be some old early '90s game my parents bought for me, not anything I've bought for myself. I remember a couple of DOS games with horrible magenta and cyan CGA graphics (even though my computer could do VGA, BTW): one was some kind of helicopter game that I couldn't figure out how to play, and the other was some kind of side-scrolling platformer or beat-em-up (maybe Ninja Gaiden, or a rip-off of it?) that I also couldn't figure out how to play.

Probably Cyberpunk 2077...

Got it on sale, after they had taken steps to correct the horrendous launch, coupled with a handful of QoL mods and now I've gotten $.05 per hour out of it.

Price: ~$20 USD

Logged time: 436.5 hours

Edit:

Forgot least... uhhh... hell, probably Ff7 rebirth. Can't really count hours, since it takes a stupid amount of fucking time to do anything, but I really can't overstate how just fucking awful this game is. Just....just fucking terrible.

While Minecraft doesn't have an hour tracker, I almost certainly have over 1000 hours for £15. I have nearly 700 hours in The Binding of Isaac, which is currently £1.09 on Steam.

Most: Cyberpunk 2077. base game + expansion and I've clocked in hundreds of hours on it. I replay it from start to end doing every single thing every year. I've done all the endings, done so many different builds, and yet I keep going back.

Least: I will admit Star Citizen. a few years ago I fell for it. I will also admit I "pledged" just over $200 for a ship. biggest gaming mistake I ever made and still to this day I feel like an idiot for falling for that scam.

Tbh I'm not sure there is a game I've clocked 1,000 hours on. I have multiple with about 250-300+ hours played; but if I had to combine the hours played with GMod on my old steam account and my current one, it would probably equal close to 1,000.

I'm not sure if there are any that I've gotten the least amount of enjoyment out of, but there are plenty that I just haven't gotten around to playing.

I’m leaving out free games I’ve spent thousands of hours in because they were zero dollars…

So the answer would be Java Minecraft. Got it before beta started and have been playing ever since.

Worst would be rise of the robots. Fell prey to the marketing back in the day and that game is as bad as they say.

Probably either:

Warframe - played for free for 500 hours, felt guilty and bought a $20 plat pack to thank them for all of the good times before quitting the game.

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate - bought for $10 on the eshop, 1000 hours later still going strong.

Not sure about what's least. Technically any game I've bought that I haven't played yet, I suppose, but the game I felt worst about buying was Quest for Camelot for Game Boy Color when I was a kid. I went to the store with my parents to spend my birthday money on a game for the new Game Boy Color I'd just gotten, but they didn't have any good GBC games. I knew that I should just wait, but I really wanted to buy a game. So, I caved and bought it even though I hadn't even seen the movie, and it was predictably terrible, and I've never forgotten it.

I've regretted that purchase for almost 30 years now.

Guild Wars 2 - I played the base and first DLC about 4k hours. The rest of thd DLCs were way less hours but still worth it.

Most: Vampire Survivors or Balatro for low price Indie games. Destiny 2 for AAA where I must have had close to 3000 hours at the end of The Final Shape (TFS).

Least: Anthem. I don’t remember if I pre ordered this game or not but my Destiny teammates definitely pressured me into getting it day one.

This was the game that convinced me live service games are a dead end. Just an absolute skeleton of a game you could tell was rushed to release. We played the 8 hour or so campaign and did a few of the post campaign missions and that was it. During all of that the game constantly crashed and the gameplay loop was DOA.

I always comment that Anthem made all the same mistakes that the original Destiny made with lack of content, story, and gameplay loop… 5 years after Destiny 1 released AND 2 years after Destiny 2 fumbled its launch.

Destiny 2 at least got a few more really good years out of it up to TFS then went off a cliff and was all but shut down this year. Kind of proves my point that live service games are a dead end.

Most: definitely Guild Wars 2 - paid around 100 GBP for 5000 hours of fun over 11 years, so that's £0.02 / hour :)

Least: the ~540 bundle games in my Steam backlog I haven't played yet, bc I'm playing GW2 and Genshin instead 🙈

Terraria, probaby. Got it on sale for $5 (it's almost always 50% off) and I've played many playthroughs with many different friends over the past 15 years. When you factor in the very good modding support, its many difficulty settings, playthrough modifiers like the one that flips the world vertically (hell is up and the overworld is at the bottom), it's a game you can play for thousands of hours.

It's still crazy how cheap this game is for how much you get out of it. The devs are awesome for this.

Grim Dawn, paid around 50€ for it plus expansions, played 2400 hours for a bit over 2 cents per hour.

On July 27 Fangs of Asterkarn, the new GD expansion gets released! I'm hyped lol

The worst deal i got is One Step from Eden, a mix of rythm game and deck builder. I had to realize that i am not capable of playing this game, because i can either do one or the other, but not both at the same time. While trying to git gud i crossed over the 2 hour playtime for a refund.

(Free) Most: Super Mecha Champions, which was a free battle royale game on Steam that was a port of a mobile game. Best FREE.99 I ever spent, was such a fun game until servers closed.

(Paid) Most: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Literally peak game. It got me into modding and software development, and I still play it to this day. Best $59.99 I ever spent ($59.99 brand new for the 1.0 gold cart in 1998)

Worst: Need for Speed Unbound. Worst $4.99 I ever spent, I turned the game off after the characters in the game couldn't stop yapping in my ear about "police and politicans oppressing street racers." Also the driving physics suck because of course they do, Criterion made it.

The Most: Hollow Knight Silksong. My second best purchase ever.

The least: a horror indie game so badly optimized I couldn't even play a single minute of it. It was just like $1 or so, but it still hurts.

Best value for dollar is definitely Elite Dangerous. I bought it for 30 bucks and have around 1400 hours in it.

Worst value game that I bought and have played might be Cyberpunk 2077. I pre-ordered and have maybe four hours total played. I keep saying I need to go back and give it a proper go now that it's fixed but nah.

Probably CSGO, because I made at least 100€ playing that game for ~500 hours, and even mostly enjoyed it.

As for the worst, kinda tough to say, since I bought so many games and it's probably one I can't remember. Only one I can think of right now is Monster Hunter 3 for the Wii, which I bought the collector's edition of, only to realize I really don't like Monster Hunter games.

For me its Skyrim, Mount and Blade Warband and Battlefield 3 (back when I still played Multiplayer). I have over 1000 Hours in all of them.

Most value is probably Awesomenauts at around €50 spent and 1950 hours coming to 2.5c/h

Team Fortress 2 is there for me too, about €100 spent and 2200 hours for a shocking 4.5c/h. Still play it to this day.

Minecraft is also around the somewhere but like everyone else I have no clue about hours played. Might be anything from 500 to 2000 hours, impossible to estimate. Since I got the beta or alpha for cheap, I think €10, it might top the other two.

My worst value game is definitely GTA 5. I think I got that at €50 or so directly from Rockstar and only played it for an hour online and like an hour singleplayer. I enjoyed gta in the past but just don't care for it anymore, got bored out of my mind. Least time I ever spent on a game that expensive without being able to refund.

Gotta be either Anno 1800 or one of the Monster Hunters.

Another for Warframe. About 4000 hours over maybe 5-6 years and I think I only ever paid like $12 for some starter platinum.

Since that's free-to-play, here are runners up:

• Satisfactory - 850 hours and counting, bought for maybe $20.
• Forza Horizon 4 - got the premium pack for $20 about 6 months before EOL and put almost 750 hours into it.
• Elden Ring - 650+ hours so far.
• Terraria - 450+ hours, what a deceptively huge game.
• Skyrim - Endlessly replayable with mods, 300+ hours.
• Witcher 3 - explored everything, Heroic says 150 hours but it could easily be more.
• Fallout 3 - hundreds of hours, explored everything.
• Kerbal Space Program - 250 hours, got it for like $16 way back when.

TF2 is way up there for me. I've played on and off since launch and accumulated 2500 hours. I think lifetime I might have gotten value from the game because I sold off a bunch of items that appreciated.

Warcraft 3+TFT I've played the campaigns at least 4 times over the years, I think plus a ton of custom maps plus of course dota 1. Definitely best bang for buck. Other games that are close are path of exile(1k hours), counter strike(800hrs), dota2(1.4k hrs) and wow (way too many hours...but also a lot more money over the years)

For more traditional/offline games:

Gothic 2 I've played at least 3 times over the years , I think. Probably have 400+ hours in it. If they remake it like they did with the first one, I'm definitely gonna replay it.

Mass effect trilogy. Played the whole trilogy 3 times and I got the legendary edition but my first playthrough of that is on hold for now.

Don't remember which number exactly, but one of the older football manager games. I probably have like 400+ hours in that.

Worst value for money? That Warcraft mobile game. For whatever reason I was stupid enough to spend a bunch on it when it came out before I realized how grindy and stupid and pointless it was.

I also have only 22 hours in stalker2 ATM even tho I got it when it came out. It was quite buggy so I figured I'd let them cook some more. I'm sure I'll get my money's worth out of it eventually.

Most: Minecraft, with over 1000+ hours

Least: Watch_Dogs: Legion. Barely made it one playthrough.

Worst is anything that I haven't gotten around to playing.

Best is either The Witcher 3, Fallout New Vegas, or Borderlands. Probably FNV.

I'm deliberately excluding free titles as that would be technically infinite. Otherwise it would be Dota+Dota2 combined, even accounting for the last few years of playing Dota2 not exactly counting as "enjoyment".

Most enjoyment is tough, but it's probably either Diablo 2 or Warcraft 3. I played both fervently throughout my childhood, but considering Dota 1 technically counts as WC3 I think that is probably the one. I played a whole ton of WC3 custom maps, even apart from Dota. It was the unifying game me and my childhood best friend bonded over.

Least enjoyment per dollar is unquestionably STALKER 2. I pre-ordered the €100 deluxe edition because I love the franchise, I loved the GSC studio and I wanted to support them through being struck by the Ukraine war. I ended up doing a single playthrough and then shelving it, waiting for patches. But do I regret my purchase? Not necessarily. I knew it was an emotional purchase, I know it was a show of support. And I knew it was an investment for the future. GSC have still not given up on the game, they've slowly been fixing it and the first DLC is coming. And mods are being developed. Do I think it will supplant Anomaly? No. But it still has the chance to pay off.

Most: Warframe, and by far. I have ~5000 hours on it, and it looks like DE will keep releasing banger updates. I've spent at least $200 (probably more) on various bundles because they deserve it. They also dodged a massive bullet when Sony tried to buy the company.

Excluding free-to-play titles, it's either ~~autistic crack cocaine~~ Factorio, Kerbal Space Program (the good one), or Derail Valley.

Least: probably Atomic Heart. I bought it at full price because of the Soviet Bioshock aesthetic and Mick Gordon's involvement, but the tutorial was so fucking long and boring that I bounced off.