Strijkbout: The classic Tomb Raider games
The games were so hyped back then and the marketing exploited feminism in a rather awful way I should say I more or less dismissed them.
I had the first TR on my shelf for almost two decades and because I liked Core Design's Project Eden I decided to play it and oh boy did I like this game.
The TR games just slowly suck you in and I just want to keep playing until the end, the gameplay is so much fun, a lot of exploring and puzzles to solve and occasional battles with enemies to keep the tension.
It also shows everything that is wrong with AAA gaming today, TR hardly had a deep and involving story but it never shoved it in your face with extensive voiced cutscenes like these days where games have tons of cutscenes and little gameplay TR is the exact opposite.
Carmageddon.
Hyped to stratospheric levels because of it's violence.
Another game I owned for a long time, even though I played it occasionally it never really grew on me, that I had the censored zombie versions probably didn't make the game more fun either.
Maybe it was because I got to play it later when the graphics looked so dated that the violence really looked cartoony and at last I downloaded a patch which replaced the zombies with human pedestrians.
This game is probably the best stress reliever I can think of as it doesn't force you to play in any way apart from keeping the timer going.
I didn't know you were a TR fiend, or did I? All together my favorite series. None of the games themselves make my best of list but the whole group of them is timeless....even the shit one.