Beginning sometime mid-June, I will have my first pc with a capable graphics card in a over 10 years. For the past two years, I have been playing on a 2.4 ghz P4 and a 32 mb Radeon Mobility 7500c. I will soon have a Core 2 Duo with an nVidia 8600m (GT?). I look forward to playing Eve and Guild Wars over 10 fps, and there are a ton of games that I haven’t paid any attention to knowing that there was absolutely no way I could play them. So what have I missed? I plan on checking out Oblivion, but beyond that, I don’t really have any idea what else I NEED to try. Tell me about the must-play games from the past few years!
What are your preferred genres?
I definitely enjoy RPG and strategy, but I’ll try most anything since it’s been a while since I’ve played much of anything.
Wow… that’s a HUGE span of time. Might I suggest one thing that might be worthwhile is looking into Gametap/Metaboli (depending on your geographic region) to pick up things from the past 5-7 years that you might have missed?
10 years? Wow. Is there a story behind that?
Company of Heroes, and some Dawns of War.
I guess I’m really just wondering about the last two years or so. The radeon handled older stuff fairly well.
-Civ4: If you like turn-based games. And the new expansion pack “Beyond the Sword” is being released this July and it looks like an awesome expansion! (also Galactic Civ2…turn based)
-Titan Quest: If you like Action RPG’s
-Medieval 2 Total War: TBS/RTS lots of fun.
Was in a similar situation and have similar tastes.
I would suggest:
Sid Meier’s Pirates
Civilization IV
Vampire Masquerade: Blood Lines
Neverwinter Nights 2
Oblivion
Galactic Civilization II
Half Life 2
Titan Quest
Rome Total War (or any in the series)
If you like strategy I’d recommend Rome: Total War. I haven’t played Medieval 2, the next game in the Total War series, but I know some like it. Rise of Legends is also a fun RTS.
On the CRPG front (apart from MMO’s), Oblivion is the obvious one. Fate is a fun dungeon crawler, and I hear generally good things about Gothic 3 (though apparently it is quite a system hog, and has its share of bugs etc.).
minesweeper
This is a good start… I’d also add:
Painkiller
HoMM V
Maybe Rise of Legends depending on how into RTS you are.
Prey
FEAR
X-Men Legends II or Marvel Ultimate Alliance if you like superheroes and action RPGs.
Silent Storm…
Tron 2.0
Bah. Don’t know how far back “the last few years” stretches, but play Mafia and Vietcong if you haven’t already. You can get them for cheap and they’re easily two of the best games ever made.
I picked up Galactic Civilizations II over the weekend. It is slowly consuming my life.
Daikatana will make you its bitch, as long as you don’t leave without your buddy Superfly.
I’d say Vampire is the best RPG of the past few years and FEAR the best FPS, both of which would have been unplayable with your old set up.
I would hold off on NWN2 until the expansion pack comes out later this year. You’ve waited this long and there are other games to play before it comes out.
Civ 4 is probably a good one to tide you over. ;)