Four Great Games Your PC Can Play

Originally Posted by Sam250

sea loses this thread for mentioning Crysis.

Contrary to popular belief, Crysis is an excellent game. It's a natural extension of the ideas in Far Cry, but with much, much better execution, great AI, excellent environmental interactivity, and superpowers. It's got one of the best "feels" of any shooter I've played as well. I don't think it's possible for anyone to dislike Crysis unless they either went in looking for something to hate about it, or never played past the first mission.

Originally Posted by John

Civ IV is the best of the lot by far.

III wasn't that great, with far too much emphasis on combat and expansion and a rather skewed balance.

IV fixes all that.

The problem with Civ IV is the system requirements. Much as I'd love to play it, my computer simply isn't good enough (or at least, it wasn't...now it's just plain dead). I really don't understand where you got the idea that Civ III emphasises combat, though - especially not when you consider the original and Civ II. O.o Civ III was the first one that put the emphasis away from combat.

hands down Battle for middle earth 2 just becuase i have had for 3 years and still play it when i've gotten games recently and i just keep coming back.

Originally Posted by Emperor Ing

EarthBound
Star Fox 2
Star Fox
Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds

They're games; my PC plays them; they count.

I was thinking more along the lines of PC exclusives when I built the list (so no emulated games), but that last one is valid.

Originally Posted by Tirry

I just wanted to point out that this is not actually true. I have a couple of games from the Windows 95 era that refuse to work on anything newer than Windows 98, because they think your operating system isn't actually advanced enough to play them. I know you can run the PC in compatibility mode, but that doesn't really help much when you can't even install the game. :/

That said, it's not a common situation.

Right. Generally, if the game is popular enough, there will be plenty of hacks and patches to make it run on a newer machine. Every old and obscure game might not be able to run on the newest machines, but most of the less obscure games will have extensive fan tech support.

Originally Posted by Tirry

...what? O.o Have you ever actually played Test of Time? They're nothing like each other. <.> They're not even in the same genre!

They're both strategy games with a strong fantasy element included. It's a stretch, sure, but they're both pretty good games.

Originally Posted by Hazz

Cave Story is amazing, it's one of my favourite games ever. But Commander Keen as a similar game? o.O It's clearly inspired by Metroidvanias more so than anything else.

I put Commander Keen because its one of the few exclusive 2D PC platformers, if not the only one. Another stretch as far as similarity goes, but worth checking out.

Originally Posted by sea

Here's some good games my PC can play:

* Bioshock
* Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
* Call of Duty: World at War
* Fallout 3
* S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
* Crysis
* Crysis WARHEAD
* Mass Effect
* Gears of War
* The Witcher Enhanced Edition
* Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
* Company of Heroes
* Supreme Commander
* Far Cry 2
* Unreal Tournament 3

My computer is hardly a state-of-the-art gaming machine, yet I can run all these games at high settings or above. Quit contributing to the "omg those games will melt your computer" mythos.

I'm not contributing to it. The truth is, however, that many of the members here run on laptops and old Pentium 4 computers with an integrated graphics card that come nowhere close to running those games. It's the most common complaint I encounter when encouraging folks to game on their PCs. I'll admit people often overestimate hardware required to run new games, but I would say most people still don't meet that hardware requirement.

Originally Posted by sea

For the record, you gain points for mentioning Deus Ex. You lose some by not praising it as one of the top five games of all time.

I may not have said it, but I believe it. Deus Ex is one of the top five games of all time.

Originally Posted by Sam

Another I'd like to reccomend: Beyond Good and Evil. I brought this ages ago when hearing how good it was but only started and finished it recently. Certainly deserving of the praise it gets.

Not a PC exclusive, it's available for every last gen console, I believe.

It's...okay. I wasn't too excited about it. It was pretty imaginative in areas, but it just felt kind of boring overall. Stealth was pretty well done, I must say.

Originally Posted by John

Play Baldur's Gate II now. All of you. It's still in stores, I belive, despite being rather old. It's just that good.

Sadly...I have yet to play it.

But there's a whole world of older Western RPGs out there worth exploring: Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape, Fallout (1&2), and so on. It helps to have a little D&D knowledge going in to most of them, but they're worth it especially if you enjoyed KOTOR.

Another one: Star Wars, Dark Forces series. While Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy I know aren't PC exclusives, I couldn't imagine them on anything but PC. Great shooters with good stories (especially Outcast, it has Lando) and the lightsaber combat is pretty amazing, especially in Academy. The later ones are built on the Quake II engine, which make them pretty slim on the requirements. Highly recommended.

Wow, I just downloaded Cave Story because I love Dr. Von Fish and his taste in games and such. I'm surprised I've never heard of it.

It's a really good game, it's like a combination, so far (keep in mind I just got out of the first cave so I'm not exactly far), of Megaman and Metroid. I love it. Also, I downloaded the Deluxe version and everything is working perfectly...I didn't even need to download the patch.

EDIT: I do have one complaint so far, though. The way I'm expected to pick up experience angers me.

Originally Posted by Forte

EDIT: I do have one complaint so far, though. The way I'm expected to pick up experience angers me.

I think you'll get over it. I thought the experience system was great; it gives you an impetus to kill enemies and not get hit at the same time, which increases the reward of playing the game right. Because you can quickly gain and lose a limited amount of levels in a weapon, there's less of a "grinding" and "uber-character" element that effects too many action game experience systems.

Originally Posted by John

Civ IV is the best of the lot by far.

III wasn't that great, with far too much emphasis on combat and expansion and a rather skewed balance.

IV fixes all that.

Sadly, not all PC's can handle that, which was kinda the subject. :p
Anyways, I'll check it out.

Also, as fairygirl mentioned, I'd recommend Planescape - Torment.

Originally Posted by Sabbo

Baldur's Gate 2 confused the heck out of me.

Basic background (This is explained if you watch the very first intro movie, the one that shows up if you sit through the splash screens, and is also the backstory/plot of Baldur's Gate I):

The setting of the game, the universe of the Forgotten Realms, has actual deities, each of which has an aspect of the world that they watch over, known as their portfolio.

Originally these gods were very...Greek (Well, maybe more Norse). They fought amongst themselves and schemed and so on. Eventually, one of the evil ones stole a powerful artifact from the "Overdeity" Ao, who had created all the other Gods. He decided that enough was enough, the gods had been too neglectful of their followers and were simply making a mess of things, so he made them all mortal. Incredibly powerful mortals, but still mortal. He also made it clear that he'd only return them to Godhood when the artifact was returned.

This was known as the Time of Troubles. Chaos...was pretty much omnipresent. Lots of parts of the world stopped working without divine oversight (such as magic, which now only worked if you were within a few miles of the ex-goddess of magic) and the gods started trying to kill each other so as to gain more influence and power when they once again became immortal.

In addition, normal people tried to kill gods so that they could get their power, and followers of the gods tried to protect/help their deities.

One of the gods, Bhaal (the god of murder), foresaw that he would die when the Time of Troubles came. so he set about creating as many children as he could. By the time that the Time of Troubles started he had a few hundred "heirs".

So, the time of troubles comes along, he's murdered, as are a few other gods. Some new ones show up, etc. but eventually the artifact is returned and the gods are made immortal again. (This whole thing is just the explanation for why the Dungeons and Dragons rules changed between 1st and 2nd edition. Seriously.)

You grow up not knowing who your parents are, but still living a reasonably normal life. Until the monastry that you live at is razed to the ground and you're forced to flee. Turns out that you're a "Bhaalspawn", or Child of Bhaal, and that the one Bhaalspawn who can kill the rest will get to become the new god of murder (There are other ways to accomplish this, too, but the more Bhaalspawn you kill the more powerful you'd become, it would seem.)

As such, one of the other Bhaalspawn is trying to hunt you down and kill you.

You eventually kill him before he can ascend to godhood.

Pretty much immediately after that your camp gets attacked in the night and you're taken captive. You then wake up and it's the start of Baldur's Gate II.


Hope that clarifies things.

Originally Posted by Tiroth

I really don't understand where you got the idea that Civ III emphasises combat, though - especially not when you consider the original and Civ II. O.o Civ III was the first one that put the emphasis away from combat.

Civ III is all about expansion, and once you can't expand any further through peaceful means you have to expand through military might.

Seriously, in competitive play your only hope is to have the biggest military and to expand constantly.

Civ IV, however, can be won even if you only have three cities and your opponent has twelve. It's not easy, but you don't lose automatically because you failed to claim an entire continent from the start.

Originally Posted by Sam250

Another I'd like to reccomend: Beyond Good and Evil. I brought this ages ago when hearing how good it was but only started and finished it recently. Certainly deserving of the praise it gets.

I just wanted to quote this for its truthfulness, I picked it up a few months ago. When it was released I was put off by the idea of walking around taking pictures of stuff. Then when I found it for 3 bucks(!) I decided to give it a go. I didn't find a boring photo shooter. I found a brilliant story and superb gameplay. I am looking forward to the second part.

I would go with The Longest Journey, beautiful story.

I also enjoyed Still Life, who's sequel is about to be released, a very interesting story and quite exciting too.

The Settlers II, great strategy!

The Longest Journey (and, to a lesser extent, Dreamfall) is an excellent game in the Adventure genre.

Some of the puzzles are a bit obtuse, but the plot is solid, and the protagonist is extremely likable.


Beyond Good and Evil is also a fun game, though not on the top of my list, it's certainly in the upper half, probably the upper 1/4.

Originally Posted by Dr. von Fish

Another one: Star Wars, Dark Forces series. While Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy I know aren't PC exclusives, I couldn't imagine them on anything but PC. Great shooters with good stories (especially Outcast, it has Lando) and the lightsaber combat is pretty amazing, especially in Academy. The later ones are built on the Quake II engine, which make them pretty slim on the requirements. Highly recommended.

I loved Jedi Academy. Outcast was too slow paced for me. The lightsaber combat is substantially improved in Academy. It's actually required to be your main weapon through a majority of the game.

1) Battle For Wesnoth
-An absolutely awesome, free turn-based strategy game that works on all platforms and has very low system requirements. My friend can run it on his laptop he bought in 2003.

2) Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
-A fantastic, free FPS game. The multiplayer is fantastic.

3) Age of Empires II
-My favorite PC game of all time. It was released 10 years ago. System requirements are very low, and you can easily find the Gold Edition of the game (featuring the original game and the expansion) for, like, $10 now.

4) Diablo II
-Another great, old, now cheap game. This game can keep you occupied for days, building up your character, and collecting items and stuff.

This is part of the reason I really don't like PC gaming. A lot of the appeal comes from RTS and point and click adventure. I can't stand AoE and variations since it's really just not my thing, and Myst absolutely bored me to tears when I had it back in the day. I think the only real enjoyment I had out of a PC, for old school anyway, was; Broken Sword 2 (the one that starts with the clown), Monkey Island series, Black and White (somewat), and that's about it. The most recent thing I've played on it is WoW, which I'm no longer paying for.

EDIT: That's another one in the post before this - Diablo II. I remember that being pretty amazing, although I didn't have the interest to get very far in it. Oh, and Theme Park World.

I just tried Myst, and I got really bored really fast. I can see the puzzle appeal, but it just went too slow for me. :<

Four Great Games Your PC Can Play

You lied! My TRS-80 can't play any of these!

Seriously, though, I spend most of my time playing games which really don't require a lot of power. Even some more recent ones- Civlization 4, for example.

I didn't really spend a whole lot on my machine- $600- but I can still play most newer games too. I just really like a lot of games which happen to be less hardware intense. (Admittedly at low settings and at lower frame rates, but that's more an issue with the integrated GPU in my laptop- something which isn't an issue if you plan to build a desktop for the same price, or spend a little more money and get a laptop with a decent GPU.)

EDIT: Also, I think Myst wasn't the best recommendation. It's a fine game, but it's overshadowed by many much better adventure games such as monkey island, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Grim Fandango, Sam and Max, and Zork.

Perhaps, but Myst is a bit easier game for total beginners to the genre to get into, since it's pretty straightforward see-and-click mechanics.

Spore Galatic adventures+ Creepy and cute expansion= a fun game to play especially the adventure creator...

Personally, I recommend these:

• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy - This game has a pretty good storyline, and the gameplay is average. However, this truly shines thanks to a fantastic modding scene. Notible mods such as Movie Battles really improve the game, and have great online communities.
• Half Life 2 - Fantastic all round game. Solid storyline, impressive game play, a strong modding scene.
• Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic - Great RPG. Period.
• Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II - Strong RTS, but not the best. Still, worth the investment if it interests you.

I'll be sure to check out some of the suggestions in here.

I heartily recommend System Shock 2, which I completed on Monday and have already started playing through again.

Originally Posted by sea

Contrary to popular belief, Crysis is an excellent game. It's a natural extension of the ideas in Far Cry, but with much, much better execution, great AI, excellent environmental interactivity, and superpowers. It's got one of the best "feels" of any shooter I've played as well. I don't think it's possible for anyone to dislike Crysis unless they either went in looking for something to hate about it, or never played past the first mission.

I found the first half fantastic - even on my 3.0ghz PC with a graphics card from early 2004. When I got into the alien part with no gravity, though, I lost motivation in a rapid pace.

Originally Posted by Xth

Spore Galatic adventures+ Creepy and cute expansion

Stop trolling, not everyone wants the securom malware secretly installed on their PC.