Chrome was made in Java, which makes it great just for that fact alone :)
I endorse Total Annihilation, Dominions II, Deus Ex, System Shock, Star Control II, and Jagged Alliance II.
StarCon2 does not make the 10 year cutoff. But its free remake, “The Urquan Masters”, is better than the original - WinXP compatible - and did I mention free?
I think there were other good games, too. You might try Wizardry 8, for example; Kohan, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Diablo 2 (for a while) are also fun. World of Warcraft is great if you want to experience what a lobster feels when you boil it - nice at first, with the temperature rising so slowly that you don’t notice you aren’t actually enjoying yourself until you’re dead.
The majority of computer games haven’t been very good for the last 10 years, since they’ve mostly gone corporate. Anyone who denies this is a filthy liar who I’ll ask: How many games are released per year? How many can you attest to being good? But some years produce something worthwhile.
Oh, I forgot to mention Far Cry. My friend loves it and keeps telling me to get it. I think it got some Game of the Year awards, too… but personally I can only vouch for its high graphical quality and superb enemy tactical AI.
Okay, there aren’t that many games in a year I’d endorse to a friend. While tastes vary, recent games I’d endorse Civ4, Battlefield 2 if you like shooters, Total War series, etc. Pirates to someone who never played the 1987 version. Silent Storm.
Some older, smaller games, even more niche: Dominions, King of dragon pass, disciples. Corporate machine/entrepreneur. Europa 1400, Star Rangers 2. Mount and blade is pretty amazing for a husband/wife developer team.
As a commie mutant traitor, I’d be the first to blame Evil Corporations, but how can you blame companies for following popular taste and releasing a product <I> people will pay money for </I>. How much of this is from getting older, being pickier, having different tastes, and little time? Last RTS I was really into was AOE1, used to rank around 1600ish on the zone, not too shabby. Last RPG I enjoyed, maybe Temple of Elemental Evil for not having retarded combat. Before that, Pool of Radiance? Yeah, I’ve played morrowind, gothic, all the neverwinter thingies, and kotors (most retarded combat. you cannot lose.) Don’t like sports games, and the only console games I’ve picked up are the farming harvest moon and sword of samurai. There aren’t many genres left. Adventure games? They’ve been gone since Sierra.
Using the “t” variable I’d like to nominate Baldur’s Gate 2 and the Throne of Bhaal expansion. I cannot, though, recommend BG1. It just didn’t do it for me. The Harpoon series is a must for the grognard. (And I just purchased Dangerous Waters, which seems to be the true descendant of Harpoon and Red Storm Rising, as well, for those that like that kind of thing.)
kotors (most retarded combat. you cannot lose.)
News to me. I lost plenty of battles in Kotor.
/e-peen shrinking!
It has to do with their D20 system. If you played normally, you might lose a lot. But if you optimized your character for high defense, and possibly used GameFAQs to find the best items, you could get your defense against various attacks to the point where a room full of Storm Troopers could fire at you for 30 seconds, without a scratch - and not just due to luck, but due to the fact that they could not hit you with any possible set of dice rolls. Why 30 seconds? IIRC you would automatically deflect the incoming lasers with your lightsaber, and the roomful of enemies would be dead by that time, even though you just stood there.
Is this bad? Yes, because that point can be reached less than halfway through the game.
Bear in mind that I never got to that point, finding the game boring quite early, so I’m going on my recollection of what my friend told me. He’s a “powergamer”, the save-and-reload-and-look-at-the-faq-kind, and may have encountered this point earlier than most people. But regardless, a combat system that allows such unrealistic crap is indeed retarded. It’s akin to making a car whose engine explodes at 77 MPH and a speedometer that goes up to 100 MPH… and selling it in Montana.
Well, I have never been much of a powergamer. Apparently that served me well in Kotor, which I found to be a jolly good time.
D20 hasn’t ever been built to be munchkin proof, so I’m not surprised that you can min/max your way to victory pretty early in the game. I’d argue that no adventure is going to be challenging if you have the faq in hand.
That said, I certainly didn’t find Kotor to ever be that challenging on a pure gameplay level (except for the final battle), but that also wasn’t the point. Not for me anyway.
This is a list of what is, IMO, excellent PC games (listed alphabetically)
Anachronox
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn
Battlezone, Battlezone 2
Deus Ex
Fallout
FarCry
Freedom Force
Freespace 2
Grim Fandango
Half-life, Half-life 2
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm
Jagged Alliance 2
Medieval: Total War, Rome: Total War
Mount&Blade
Myth: The Fallen Lords, Myth II: Soulblighter
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
No One Lives Forever, No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way
Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis
Painkiller
Planescape: Torment
Rise of Nations
Sacrifice
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Sid Meier’s Pirates!
Sim City 3000
Silent Storm
Space Rangers 2
StarControl II
SWAT 4
System Shock, System Shock 2
The Temple of Elemental Evil: A Classic Greyhawk Adventure
Thief: The Dark Project, Thief II: The Metal Age, Thief: Deadly Shadows
Total Annihilation
Tribes
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
Warzone 2100
Worms 2
X-COM: UFO Defense
k thx bye
t instead of three years and grest instead of greatest/best? That’s some damn lazy typing.
Hence the Typing of the Dead recommendation see?
Nice list roguefrog. I especially like the inclusion of Sacrifice which is the most overlooked classic on that list. Sacrifice is still tied with Warlords Battlecry 2 as my favorite RTS game.
Speaking of which, there are a few games that are missing from that list, but fom the top of my head, the biggest omissions:
Warlords Battlecry 2 (WBC 2)
Psychonauts
Max Payne 1 and 2
Master of Orion 2
Why not WBC 3? Me and my friends initially played the hell out of it, and it seemed to be an improvement over WBC 2 in every way. But then we discovered some of the bigger bugs. And we looked forward to the patch. And then the patch came, with its HUGE balance changes. It took a while but we adapted. Warriors became much more powerful than magic users. We shrugged and adapted. And then came another patch with huge balance changes, and we threw our hands up in the air and gave up.
(And then came another patch with huge balance changes, but we were barely paying attention anymore).
For Psychonauts, I used an X-box Controller that a friend of mine made for me for use with my PC, by combining the wires with a USB cable. The fan-made device drivers on the internet make this one of the best gamepads available for the PC. You can also use a 360 Controller, I bet. Or just play it on the X-box I suppose. Much easier. But still a great PC game if you use a good gamepad.
And what can I say about Master of Orion 2? It’s just a classic. I missed it on the first go around. I first heard about it on the CGOnline forums (cdmag.com) when everyone kept bringing it up as MOO2. I thought initially it was a farm simulator of some sort. My roommate in 1999 had a copy of it, and we played it hotseat.
And we still play it to this day. I’d say we still play about 6 or 7 full games of MOO2 every year. The game just doesn’t get old. We still play on Huge-Impossible-8 players-w/Antaran Victory turned off, and we still lose most of the time if there’s only two of us, but win some of the time if there’s three of us, and consistently win if there’s four of us. (Since most of us human players always team up).
Ah MOO2. Will you ever get a true successor? Where is MOO2’s equivalent of Civ4? Sigh. One day, it’ll happen.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines
Gothic 2
I got bored with BG1 and never finished – and so never gave BG2 a try. What made the sequel so much better?
Better story, more to do, no more lawn mower maps, etc. Just better executed all around. I really disliked BG1 but 2 was fabulous.
– Xaroc
I liked them both. BG2 felt… I dunno… denser, bigger, grander. I liked the scope of it, the sheer quantity of quests and party NPCs. The main plot was ok but I preferred a lot of the smaller subquests that you would wander into as the game unfolded. The Planar Prison… the troll infested keep… the Underdark sequence… good stuff. Chapters 2 and 6 (the most nonlinear segments of the game) were the high points for me.
I also liked the fact that your characters are higher up on the power curve so you can have some pretty epic battles with dragons, demi-liches, and whatnot. I’ve heard it said that D&D is best balanced for lower levels (a la BG1 and Icewind Dale) but I enjoyed the feeling in BG2 of growing into a being of awesome power. If you play through Throne of Bhaal you and your party really are a force of nature by the end.
Thanks, that sounds grest…
I bought it a few years back and it has just been sitting on a shelf, along with a few others. I should dig it out.
Maybe. It’s only the best, most faithful AD&D RPG ever made.
Thanks, that sounds grest…
The grestest!
It’s a portmanteau of “great” and “best”.
Grest is a perfectly cromulent word. It embiggens all of our vocabularies.
On a more serious note, BG2 is probably the best of Bioware’s many good products, especially with the expansion. Like all of their games, it is hamstrung by having the male love interest being a total git, but that might not be an issue for everyone.
Troy