Room/lair/house/world creation games :)

Dungeon Keeper
Theme Hospital
Startopia
The Sims
Tropico
Don't Starve
...and so on.

I like the process of collecting resources and slowly building up some kind of house/empire.

I also really enjoy games with great characterisation like "The Knight of the Old Republic" and "The Walking Dead"

I always loved Fighting games, Classic FPS games and Adventure games.

As I grew older I began to experiment with other genres. I'm pretty fond of racing games, strategy games (both real time and turn based 4x games) and western RPGs, though I have little patience to dominate any of them, usually playing very casually. Despite this, I'm used to playing only 4x games at a very low difficulty, the rest I tend to play at normal difficulty.

The only genre I play reasonably well is the FPS genre. I love UT, Quake and, mainly, Doom. :)

I… don't really have favorite genres. I have favorite themes and a little bit of criteria.

Criteria: If it has a story I will play it. Shadowrun Returns, KotOR, Inquisitor, Expeditions, XCOM, Brütal Legend, Mark of the Ninja, Bastion, Assassin's Creed II, Fallout, FTL, A Virus Named Tom, NWN, NWN II, Crusader Kings II, Dungeon Keeper, Stronghold HD, Don't Starve, Simon the Sorcerer, Bard's Tale, I love them all. And they're a huge mix! I can't just say, "I play RPGs" because they aren't all "traditional RPGs." I mean, FTL is an absolute rogue-like! Mark of the Ninja is a platformer, no questions asked! Simon is a point and click adventure, A Virus Named Tom is a puzzle game, Don't Starve is some sort of survival genre, I don't even know how to classify XCOM. But the one thing they all have are great stories. Stories I can get invested in, characters I like, characters I hate, and they just generally have PLOT. Even a stupidly simple plot, but they all have an actual story.

Alright, so it has to have a story. Next up, what kind of themes do I like.

Themes:

I like to rule. Muahahah. Civ V, Crusader Kings II, SimCity 2000, Stronghold HD, Dungeon Keeper, games where I can rule and shape a town, city, kingdom, empire. It's not just the building aspect, it's the ruling aspect. Owning the Villa is probably my favorite part about Assassin's Creed II, Crossroad's Keep is the best about NWN II, etc. I also love the building aspect, especially if I can make building choices but I also really love to be able to influence my people; I want to build this and not that, I want my people to be like this, react like that, we approve of these guys, we hate these guys, we all were tights on Friday, etc.

I like to play the Bad Guy, or at least as Evil. NWN especially HotU, NWN II, BG II, Dungeon Keeper, KotOR, even Bard's Tale a little a bit. It's just fun, you don't get a lot of villain-centric novels or movies. You see more these days with things like Breaking Bad, but earlier? Eh, it was rare, it was more common to see simply grey morality. Occasionally you would get something like Scarface, or the Godfather, or Suicide Kings but not often. And very, very rarely did the villain actually win. So these are really fun to play.

Speaking of grey morality I like games with Flexible Morality! Go figure, right? Anyways Avernum, Geneforge, Avadon, the Witcher, XCOM, Expeditions, etc. Games where either morality just doesn't apply, or things definitely are not black and white. In fact, half the time they aren't even shades of grey, they're things like blue and fuschia and lime-green. Civ games even have a tendency to fall into this, which is awesome.

And then there are the things that aren't themes and are simply, aesthetics? I don't know. Just general stuff.

I like innovative games. Bastion, check out that fully reactive narrator! How cool is that?! Mark of the Ninja, holy shit it feels like they kidnapped the animators from Disney in the Nineties. I just like games that feel like they truly went the distance, pushed something, anything to the limit. Games that feel like they added to video games as a whole.

I like colorful games. I know that's shallow, but it is true. I love Bastion, Trine, Torchlight, HOMM III, Rainslick Precipice of Darkness, Expeditions, Brütal Legend, etc. I just get so depressed staring at grey walls, and brown walls, and oh joy are we in a cavern or a crypt or ugh… I admit, I have never actually managed to finish Icewind Dale because it is so freaking grey/brown/white. I generally get through the Kuldahar Crypt section and just give up. Which makes me sad because there actually are some cool mosaics and tapestries and stuff you just can't see it. Morrowind is another one, yay more murky muddy swamp colours and everything looks like gloom and doom and it's so BORING. I would rather play Mario and rescue the princess for the 9000th time then play Morrowind. But I can play text-based games no problem. I have no idea why.

RPGS

Love them! One of my favorite genres. Being thrust into a totally different world or void, where you craft out a journey of your own making. I do a fancy, a cross between character-driven sets and exploration. Where your actions matter, and different choices yield different outcomes, a fairly dynamic world, where there's interesting interaction with NPCs, and a reflection of things that you do.

Also, exploration, attractive landscapes to feast the eyes on and sink the imagination in. Whether it's Sci-fiction surrealness in forbidden space or dazzling sights of natural wilderness in fantasy. Or better yet, well-done cityscapes like in Vampire Bloodlines. At times, I'd just pop into the graveyard in hollywood to gaze at the dotted lights of boats/vehicles moving across, with the backdrop of a night city. Pretty gorgeous.

Strategy

This could comprise anything from combat to management. I often like a touch of strategy/sim, where you could see the results of your moves play out. It's also important that you can get to tweak or customize your objectives in the game. Or at least, some allowance to do things differently each time. To have the kind of fun you want, inspite of the framework. Goes together with randomized layouts or settings. I have a larger preference for turn-based then real-time, but a helpful pause button and a save function tend to be quite handy enough.

Adventure

I deem this genre a lighter sister to RPGS. Games I pull out, when I just want to kick back for some relaxing escapism. Point and click adventures, where you simply allow yourself to be immersed into the story are my favorites.

Sims

Specifically, The Sims franchise and The movies! :D

There are movies?

No, no, "The Movies Game" by Lionhead studios. This is what I was referring to - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Movies.

Roguelikes - ZAngband is my favourite, partially because I love the Amber books, with Larn a close second.

Text-based Games - Hunt The Wumpus, Colossal Cave, and of course the Infocom games (Suspended being my top pick of those).

4x Space Games - Deuteros, Master of Orion, X, and 4x-likes such as Homeworld, ORB and Starglider.

Unknown World Games - Harder to define, but games where the environment is unique, containing its own logic, and where exploration and experimentation are key. Games like Botanicula, Proteus, Shelter, Alpha Waves, MirrorMoon, Archipelagos and Mindwalker.

Hybrid Games - Games that successfully fuse disparate gaming styles into a clever blend, like Combat Cats, Radical Dungeon Sweeper, and Heroes Of Kalevala.

RPG (more towards the Fallout 1&2, BGs, IWD's or even Skyrim, Vampire Bloodlines...less so towards the Diablos)

P&C Adventures

Stealth action games (Thief, Thief 2, Dishonored, Deus Ex, some of the Splinter Cells)

Horror games (almost any category of gameplay, especially if it has a Lovecraftian kinda feel)

I am a P&C guy myself. Started playing them, love them and have not tried any other types because I still have several point and click adventures to play.

I love Strategy games like Total War or Civilization as well as RPG's like Fallout, TES games.

But my favorite is for sure Strategy games, I drool over Total War... though that doesn't seem healthy haha.

Well for me it would be the opposite end of my least favourite.

so Pay-to-play games, regardless of the type of game, I'm much more willing to like it if I'm paying up front and not being constantly pressed into paying more money just to make it remotely enjoyable.