Tribes Ascend was close, but they messed it up peddling microtransactions and a strange focus on automatic weapons, which was never the focus of Tribes.
Good choice. Myth is in my top five. I was part of the external beta for it and unlike most games I participated in beta for back in the day I played Myth nonstop for months after release.
Loved me some Steal the Bacon. Could not get enough of that in multiplayer.
I was in the Beta too!
Hmm… I’m gonna go with Final Fantasy Tactics.
DOOM 2
Boy but that ending. Great game though. I don’t know that I’ve played anything quite like it since… the style/tactics yes but the package… nope.
Ultima V
AI War: Fleet Command. But ask me on another day and you might get a different answer.
Modded Minecraft
Close Combat 2. So many great memories, and at a scale the computer could play reasonably well.
https://www.gog.com/game/close_combat_2_a_bridge_too_far
Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries
Deus Ex
Baldur’s Gate 2. Followed closely by Skyrim.
Wow, 73 posts already and I’m the first to say Diablo 2? (I know, I know, someone did say 3, but 2 was way better).
That game changed my whole outlook on what makes a good game and what it means to balance player options. I even remember writing a job application where I talked about how the economy was in perfect balance because it was inefficient enough to keep the random items in balance with the ones you could trade for, but efficient enough with SOJs and Perfect Skulls to let you actually acquire stuff like the runeword or the frostburns or whatever you needed to boost you to the next level. Turns out Diablo 3 managed to show how right that economy was by crashing and burning at first with a far more efficient market.
Anyway, uhh… Diablo 2. Five Stars. Would buy again.
It was Baldurs Gate, the original, that captured my fancy and turned me into a computer gamer.
Today I would have to say the Dark Souls games are my favorite. I am re-playing DS3 now in fact.
I was already kind of a PC gamer when I played Baldur’s Gate. Mostly by way RTS and FPS games. Baldur’s Gate (and CRPGs at large) simply hardened it to the point of no return. I think I didn’t play a single JRPG for a decade after and I stopped caring about new consoles opting instead to upgrade my PC. Them craze '90s.
Starflight is mine. I like it so much that I bought a Surface Go (the 4gig model) to play it on. That and the old gold box DnD games. Here’s a screen shot of Starflight.
If it wasn’t for Everquest, this would be it for me as well. Nothing before or since, has consumed me in the way Everquest did at release.
Tribes though…man…what a game. Nothing has even come close as a multiplayer game, it’s just perfect. I’ve said before, if they just reskinned that, and kept exactly the same mechanics, and pumped some money into E-sport tournaments for it, it would be massive.
I’d have to go with Thief 1 - more uneven, but the highs are so high.
Everquest, OG through the Luclin expansion. Velious-era raiding was tops. I also loved playing a monk, pulling for groups/raids, doing the monk epic quest, etc. And the community that formed around the game was special.