I’ve rolled over the levels on this game…once.
I submit: Tempest 2000, ideally Jaguar version, but PC is still good. (And a sequel is coming to the Vita soon.)
Is this PC only? To go a little off topic, I picked up Ogre Battle 64 on the virtual console a week ago. This is one of the coolest and most unique strategy games I’ve ever played.
I’d read someone praising the game, and picked it up on a whim. I thought it was going to be a grid-based strategy RPG like the other Ogre Battle games on PSP and GBA, but it’s not.
Imagine a mash up of Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem and Kohan. It’s a real time strategy game played on an overland map, but all your units are squads of individual soldiers that have their own stat trees and equipment. When two units come together, it zooms up to a tactical screen where the units automatically trade blows with each other kind of like a classic final fantasy fight screen. You can give them general orders like attack weakest and also cast spells. Terrain plays an important part as well, as some units move and fight better in forests or mountains. Units also get fatigued and you need to tell them to set up camp, but if they are attacked while sleeping it’s a big disadvantage.
I can’t recommend it enough. You can get it on the Wii or Wii mode on the WiiU.
I assume 2D console games hold up a lot better. Emulators give you scaling options, and it seems hard to screw up a gamepad interface.
The widescreen patch is old news. You hadn’t heard about the NewDark patch? Also TFix for Thief 1 and Tafferpatcher for Thief 2.
For those of you who don’t enjoy the combat in Anachronox, the unofficial patches include the ability to map keys to various degrees of time scaling. I use a mild speedup as a ghetto “run” key, and a faster one to power through the unskippable cutscenes (like all the elevator sequences in the Bricks) and combat animations.
Along with my earlier recommendation of Doom, here are two other games that haven’t been mentioned but I think are hugely playable classic games:
If it wasn’t for the braindead AI, I’d also recommend Ascendency. I really liked the mix of 4X, planet-building, tactical 3d (as in movement, not graphics) space combat and randomised tech trees. It’s one of those games that has that “just one more turn” drive.
Also: Transport Tycoon Dexlue. Well, OpenTTD, but that’s basically the same thing, right? ;) (I’d say the only reason I don’t continually play OpenTTD is because of the unsatisfying way it handles income. The further you transport something, the more it makes. I’d much prefer a true supply and demand system. I know there are mods, but last time I checked they were buggy and they all required me to recompile OpenTTD :/)
edit: Looks like cargodist is in the main OpenTTD distribution these days! Amazing, except I disagree with cargodist. It goes about solving the problem in completely the wrong way. (Rather than generating cargo in cities and having the cargo want to go to other cities, instead it tries to pretend cargo went on your routes and the play explicitly says which routes etc. Boo).
Infocom games, of course. Most of them are absolutely amazing and their graphics have aged amazingly well!
As mentioned just above, Transport Tycoon Deluxe came to mind.
X-COM, Entrepreneur, Ultima III/IV/V, Ultima Underworld, TIE Fighter, and Diablo 2 all aged well.
I left out Star Control 2. Shame on me!
This is most definitely worth playing over and over, especially if you have not heard the 3DO voice overs.
You can get the whole thing from the Internets under the title, ‘Ur-Quan Masters’.
Link: http://sc2.sourceforge.net.
Outcast. Still looks good, and the story is great imo.
Masters of Orion 1 & 2.
Heroes of Might & Magic 1 & 3.
Alpha Centari.
Panzer General.
Secret of Monkey Island.
Probably some more as they come to me. Oh, mentioned above, 1830, which we will still set up rather than play the board game because it is quicker to play.
Er…why not HOMM 2?
HoMM III is basically HoMM II, but cleaned up and perfected. The focus was on creating the systems in II, and not having to cover that ground again (with the specter of 3DO self-immolating on a daily basis just to rattle you during II), the focus was on crafting the game itself, rather than constructing the system. So, while you’ll still get a good game with II, all in all, you can bypass it and go to III.
I’d throw in Dungeon Master.
Majesty. I really wish the sequel hadn’t been such a disappointment.
Don’t skip HoMM2. Great music, very pretty 2D graphics. HoMM3 tried for a more realistic style, and its presentation is much blander; HoMM2 is like playing an animated stained-glass window.
I’m thoroughly satisfied with the arrangement of this list.
But… NOLF2 was terrible. Strip that out, sort System Shock 2 in there, and all will be right with the world.
I recently replayed the two NOLF games and the first was just as amazing as I’d remembered. The 2nd was really bad. If it wasn’t for the respawning enemies it would have been a worthy sequel.
This x 100.
Oh right, NOLF2’s respawning enemies–I dealt with that in 2 ways. The first was to avoid killing guards and do missions as pure stealth. The second was to just suck it up and run & gun my way through, which turns out to be completely viable in some areas.
I also replayed the original NOLF recently, and it’s great as an overall experience, but it’s also far from perfect. The stealth gameplay is awful (some missions are instafail if you’re spotted), and the endgame is frustratingly difficult.
And the utterly nonsensical plot (the US must nuke Russia if genetically engineered super-soldiers invade tiny insignificant island WTF???), the boatloads of useless spy gadgets, the level recycling and backtracking, the confusing layouts… ugh.