The Best of PC Gaming

[Grippage]

Commandos 2: Men of Courage (2001)

Real-time WW2-tactix. You control a motley crew of specialists who travel around the world mostly to sabotage the Nazis.

You should play it because it looks

fuckin' gorgeous!, the gameplay is action-oriented yet relaxing, it's original, has a really immersive mood and uh

[AndrewArmstrong]

Repeating a lot of others but some serious missing ones!

You need to look at some classic RPG's. I'd defiantly recommend:

• Baldur's Gate series - Classic 2d tactical D&D RPG games. Text text text text. BG2 had good character development, and is tough as nails if you install AI mods (since I'm replaying it and I'm stuck, stupid planar sphere...might come back when I get Time Stop, you foolish halflings!)
  
• Planescape Torment is highly recommended, is next after BG2 for me.
  
• Neverwinter Nights - gobloads of custom content (I modded a bit for it too!), but the games campaigns are pretty fun after the original games (which was mainly a slog). Can get packs of all the games content which is hours of fun if you like D&D 3E and the stories presented.
  
• Mount & Blade - Brilliant open-worldness in a world of swords, shields and arrows. Massive battles, basically a sandbox for fighting. Amazing fun if you get into it, addictive as anything.
  
• Knights of the Old Republic - Star Wars RPG, with D&D backend rules. I found it much more fun on PC, and man was it fun to romp around as a proper badass Jedi. Fun story too (there's a reason they're reusing the setting for the MMO rather then the "Empire" setting again). Looked better too then the original Xbox. The second game is okay, mainly kinda a rushed story and some real dead brained plot points.
  
• Mentioned was Deus Ex - great to try! I need to finish this, but it is insanely fun figuring out espionage or just going in guns blazing or whatever. Individual missions are pretty sandbox heavy so you get to play around and explore (with a few situations thrown where you're stuck making some kind of mandatory decision mind you, usually at the end of missions - it is a linear game really).
  

Strategy was mentioned a lot (and is better on PC).

• I had fun with Red Alert 1/2 (they're free on EA's site I think now)
  
• Total War is brilliant and huge/time consuming
  
• Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 1/2 are well built single and multiplayer RTS games by Relic. Homeworld 1 and 2 are meant to be good too, but never finished 1 (v. hard singleplayer).
  
• Civilization 4 will ruin your life, so play it. Turn based strategy at it's finest.
  
• I recently also have been playing AI War, a surprisingly fun co-op strategy game (I love co-op, love big strategy games...great mix!).
  
• Warcraft III for some slightly newer fun - shame it has fixed resolutions (urg) but the singleplayer was pretty fun, and Defence of the Ancients is probably worth a shot too.
  
• Age of Empires II - Terribly fun singleplayer, surprisingly so for a isometric game, and the best of the series by far in my opinion.
  
• SimCity was mentioned, but there's also Transport Tycoon (see Open Transport Tycoon for a free version recently updated to version 1.0), and Rollercoaster Tycoon (which I'm not tempted to reinstall, heh) where you build a awesome theme park.
  

Shooters since they're fun:

• I think everyone can agree the original Half-Life is worth playing. Some parts seriously didn't age well graphically, but it has inventive levels (and bosses) and a lot of polish. Xen (alien world) bit at the end isn't too hot. Sequels are fine too. Valve's stuff is generally top notch if you can do FPS mechanics.
  
• Max Payne 1 and 2 are top notch (I'd recommend both). Film noir shooters. Brilliant. Still love the over the top stories, just shouts "Awesome" at you in slow motion, and the games are relatively short making them not live out their welcome.
  
• The early Call of Duty games (1 and 2) hold up well singleplayer-game wise, and are fun, I always thought much better then Medal of Honour (not that MoH was bad mind you). Great, great setpieces and battles.
  
• Star Wars: Republic Commando (was this on consoles? probably, easy to play on the PC though, so well designed!) - great linear singleplayer team-based shooter game, and man I don't like the prequels much so that was surprising when I played it. I still don't know why this has no sequel, it had a cliffhanger ending and was so much more fun then the films!
  
• Thief (is this a shooter? more stealth...) - I'm terrible at it, but it is a brilliant series.
  
• Stalker's been mentioned. Yes, play it, brilliant. Must have. Deadly efficient at killing you, you must be good at FPS games to survive, but it is such a satisfying game - you can actually explore world and do things your way.
  

Others:

• Psychonauts - Amazingly fun (characters, sheer madness, going into peoples minds! and the levels are pretty good and don't rely on dreaded 3d platforming much, and works well on the PC), although the difficulty curve at the end can be game-ending, there is some ingenious parts to the game that make it worth playing at least up until that point.
  
• Beyond Good and Evil - Another platformer, yes it is pretty damn fun actually. Again, for some bizarre reason, the most stupidly hard boss at the end, but playing the rest of it is cool. Simply a very nice setting. Story isn't explained much either, but the characters are darn fun. I found it fine on the PC control-wise.
  
• A few of the classic point and clicks I enjoyed, mainly for the story; Day of the Tentacle (although completed this sans guide!), Discworld 1 (not played 2), Sam and Max (very Guidedangit though). Not played many as you can see.
  

That's about it for me and these are, well, all must-plays in my opinion, at least for the singleplayer element. I could narrow it down, but why bother? no one else has

[Razor]

Deus Ex is pretty cheap and even on sale on steam now!

Also I always have to mention Ultima 7 (both parts, they are different, one from Richard Garriot, one from Warren Spector), and of course Planescape Torment.

Those three are not only great PC games but IMO the best games, on any system from any time period. Sadly, no recent game really got there but maybe they came out exactly at the right time.

Others I recommend:

System Shock 2

Thief

All Blizzard games since WarCraft 2

All Valve games

[Garple]

Good news, friends: both Deus Ex games are available together for $5 on Steam. I'm downloading the first one now.

[Joflar]

I recommend you one of my all-time favourite FPS:

No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way.

It contains shooting, sneaking, looting and plenty of humour. And the graphics are good looking up to today (especially the character designs).

Ah, this is such a great game. I need to play that again.

[Jayel]

Personally I recommend NOLF1 (which I loved) over NOLF2 (which I hated). It's not me trying to be elitist or anything... I liked everything about NOLF2 except that the designers are trying to "encourage" you to play each level in some specific manner and it felt very constricting.

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm going to repeat Little Big Adventure because I just realized what this thread is for and those games should be played. Best part is the second one is like 10 times better than the first, and the first is already grand.

I'm guessing people already mentioned the obvious best adventure games around. I'd throw a few Coktel Vision (Goblins series, The Prophecy, and Woodruff) games and the Tex Murphy games into the mix for weirdly designed but still great adventures.

Also tracking down copies of Another World, Heart of Darkness, the two Oddworlds, Prince of Persia 1 and 2 (maybe 3D if you're curious) would be ideal if you are into frustrating yet fun storylined action games. They are all somewhat similar. I think every single one exists on other platforms though so they aren't really exclusively PC, but I think with the exception of Prince of Persia 1, their best versions are the PC versions.

Sorry I only have 90s games recommendations. I stopped using my PC for games before I graduated high school unless the game is exclusively on PC. Now I just mostly use it for working on stuff.

Edited April 22, 2010 by syntheticgerbil

[SoulChicken]

Little Big Planet is definitely high in the list of "The Best of PC Gaming"

(did you mean little big adventure synthetic gerbil because you wrote Little Big Planet if I were you I would stealth edit that super quick to preserve your internet cred?)

EDIT: syntheticgerbil is a stealth editing bastard

Edited April 22, 2010 by SoulChicken

[syntheticgerbil]

Now no one will ever know what you were talking about.

[Garple]

I'm going to repeat Little Big Adventure

It's free now, apparently. http://www.lbahq.com/download.php

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm not sure if it really is, but I doubt anyone cares it's available to download at this point. Activision or EA might care though, since I think one or the other still holds the publishing rights.

God that site is ugly though.

[elmuerte]

No, Little Big Adventure is not free. That sites is illegally providing a download for it. If the game really was free I would provide it for download from my LBA fan site. The only legal way to get a copy is to buy a second hand copy from eBay or something, but watch out, there are a lot of illegal copies sold as legitimate.

Copyright for the games is owned by Fred Raynal (creator of the game), and some other guy (CEO of Delphine iirc), not by EA or Activision.

[Garple]

Oh...bummer. I just googled it quick and found that site but didn't really have time to dig deep. Well, I didn't download it, for what it's worth.

Anyway: Deus Ex...It seems awesome so far, even though I've mostly just played the tutorial. In the very first actual mission, the first thing I did was jump in the water. I found some supply crates under the dock, but didn't have anything to open them. I tried to use the taser to see if I could electrocute myself by using it underwater but that didn't work. I got a kick out of smashthestate being the code for the revolutionary group's (I guess that's what they are, no?) security system...as it's semi-plausible but also goofy and cute. Also, I like the fact that it seems a little like a cyber-punk version of X-Men. I've spent about an hour with it so far and I plan to keep going. Do you guys think this is an interesting game to be the first big title played by a relative PC virigin? Is anyone interested enough in my experience with it as a newcomer for me to start a thread, play all the way through and post my impressions as I go along RPS style?

Note: when I say "relative PC virgin" what I mean is: I've played a bunch of games on a PC, but I've never played any of the kind of stuff that would be considered quintessential and sort of native to the platform (excepting a few hours of KOTOR and a few hours of Morrowind back when they were relatively new). And as I understand it, there's a flavor and style (and other things that would be described by equally vague words) to PC games that make them special and sort of set apart (not necessarily better, mind you) from console games. I've started Fallout 2 and some other stuff but I've never committed enough to get comfortable with the platform, so I always end up losing interest...do you guys think this game would be a good one for committing and diving in?

[Sombre]

Oh...bummer. I just googled it quick and found that site but didn't really have time to dig deep. Well, I didn't download it, for what it's worth.

Anyway: Deus Ex...It seems awesome so far, even though I've mostly just played the tutorial. In the very first actual mission, the first thing I did was jump in the water. I found some supply crates under the dock, but didn't have anything to open them. I tried to use the taser to see if I could electrocute myself by using it underwater but that didn't work. I got a kick out of smashthestate being the code for the revolutionary group's (I guess that's what they are, no?) security system...as it's semi-plausible but also goofy and cute. Also, I like the fact that it seems a little like a cyber-punk version of X-Men. I've spent about an hour with it so far and I plan to keep going. Do you guys think this is an interesting game to be the first big title played by a relative PC virigin? Is anyone interested enough in my experience with it as a newcomer for me to start a thread, play all the way through and post my impressions as I go along RPS style?

Note: when I say "relative PC virgin" what I mean is: I've played a bunch of games on a PC, but I've never played any of the kind of stuff that would be considered quintessential and sort of native to the platform (excepting a few hours of KOTOR and a few hours of Morrowind back when they were relatively new). And as I understand it, there's a flavor and style (and other things that would be described by equally vague words) to PC games that make them special and sort of set apart (not necessarily better, mind you) from console games. I've started Fallout 2 and some other stuff but I've never committed enough to get comfortable with the platform, so I always end up losing interest...do you guys think this game would be a good one for committing and diving in?

Deus Ex is widely regarded as one of the best games of all time. Personally pal, I'd say to play it as early as you can. Because it's such a relatively old tech now (2001?), I'd say play it now while your tolerance for bad graphics and engine is low. It'd be hard to play a lot of super new really well designed games, then go back to play Deus Ex

Not to say it's bad, it's just a very old game in terms of how games have developed!

[Garple]

Good advice, thanks.

[Patters]

Deus Ex is widely regarded as one of the best games of all time. Personally pal, I'd say to play it as early as you can. Because it's such a relatively old tech now (2001?), I'd say play it now while your tolerance for bad graphics and engine is low. It'd be hard to play a lot of super new really well designed games, then go back to play Deus Ex

Not to say it's bad, it's just a very old game in terms of how games have developed!

Essentially it hasn't aged well.

[Sombre]

Essentially it hasn't aged well.

Pretty much. I can still play it, and it's still a fucking astonishing game, but times have changed and games got better. It's a prisoner of its own time really.

[Garple]

It's a prisoner of its own time really.

I would like to play a Russian PC game called "Time Prisoner".

[Kolzig]

Copyright for the games is owned by Fred Raynal (creator of the game), and some other guy (CEO of Delphine iirc), not by EA or Activision.

Oh how I wish that Frédérick Raynal would make a comeback to Video game business and make a new LBA game.

The rights limbo is from hell. That limbo is keeping many legendary games from coming back "from the dead".

Holy crap, I didn't know that his company was the company that made Time Commando, that was a cool game! Does anyone what is this unnamed project that he is working on with Ubisoft?

[dibs]

Aaaaaagh. I frogot to buy Dues Ex and now it's back to full price><

Super lame.

Has anyone mentioned the countless awesome indie games that you can get on the PC? Right now I'm more than addicted to Desktop Dungeon and the Dwarf Fortress tutorial!

[elmuerte]

Does anyone what is this unnamed project that he is working on with Ubisoft?

I posted this earlier this month.

[Kolzig]

Holy crap! That would be cool, but further reading tells me it's an april fools joke?

[elmuerte]

Holy crap! That would be cool, but further reading tells me it's an april fools joke?

correct

[JonCole]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152190&Tpk=ge600

$900 for:

Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

CPU Type Intel Core i5 430M(2.26GHz)

Screen 16"

Memory Size 4GB DDR3

Hard Disk 320GB

Optical Drive DVD Super Multi

Graphics Card ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730

Video Memory 1GB DDR3