Favourite PC Games

[legios]

So, seeing as we didn't have a thread I thought I'd start one. What PC Games are folk partial too, and why do you like em?

For me I have a fairly clear list of my top-notch games:-

"Deus Ex": I love the freedom that this game gives you to operate - run and gun? You can do that. Stealth and lateral approaches to situations? You can do that too if you want. Whether you decide to approach the game with the standard FPS mentality or whether you find another path to your objectives it's a game that makes you feel like you have the freedom to chose your own path. It's also one of the few PC games to really make me think about _why_ I was making the choices I was. It may not be a "functional world" but it pulls off the sleight of hand of making you feel that you are interacting with a functional world better than most games (including its own sequel)

"Freespace" & "Freespace 2": I'm partial to arcade flight-sims anyway, they speak to the part of me that was raised on "Star Wars", "Wing Commander" and "Elite", and the Freespace games are for me the apex of this pretty-much deceased genre. At a time when other games had tried to create a sense of epic by getting in bored Hollywood actors to stand in front of bluescreens and create FMV sequences with horrible writing "Freespace" threw it all out of the window and went back to brass-tacks. Paring things down to the basic level of - you fly a fighter in space they had much of the epic come from facing you with a tough enemy that seemed unstoppable right to the very end. The difficulty curve was also interesting - starting the player out without the things that had been common in the genre (shields etc) and drip-feeding the technology into the game helped to reinforce the "back to the wall" feeling which made every mission you won feel that much more rewarding.

System Shock 2: An early experiment in giving the player a choice of what tools he wanted to use to interact with the challenges of the world - brute force, or a more strategic approach. Shock 2 is a great example of how to really work with a claustrophobic environment and leave the player examining every corner of his environment for hidden threats. Better than most shooters that try horror because rather than rely on "monster jumps out of cupboard and attacks you" in Doom 3 style, System Shock relies more on reinforcing the fact that most of it's monsters are the remains of your former comrades - their bodies hijacked by outside forces against their will. A fantastic example also of how to tell a story primarily in the past tense, even whilst the player is playing in the present tense.

UFO: Enemy Unknown: Simple but effective Squad level tactical play, mixed with some wonderfully cartoon graphics and a, once-again, simple but effective strategy layer made for a playing experience that wasn't really available much elsewhere at the time. I got quite absorbed by this game - attached to my troops enough that I was forever balancing Force Protection with defending civilians from the alien menace and taking it quite personally when a UFO slipped past my defences to launch a terror raid against helpless men and women. The technology research tree was rewarding - both in terms of giving you new equipment to equip your troops with and in terms of making you feel a sense of progress in understanding the threat. None of the sequels really measured up to the original ("Terror from the Deep" might have been close if rights issues hadn't have nixed the original plan of having you coordinate the battle against Cthullu and it's spawn).


There's my little gaggle of PC Games that I'm still really attached to. How about you?

Karl

[Cullen]

I'm right with you on Freespace 1 and 2, plus the X-COM games. Fan-bloody-tastic. Don't know if you know Karl but there's a Battlestar Galactica (the reimagined series) mod called Beyond the Red Line built using a heavily modified Freespace 2 engine. It's only got a demo at the moment but I heartily recommend you check it out. Freespace 2 really was the pinacle of the dead and much lamented space combat sim genre, even more so than the X-Wing games that spawned it.

A couple of years back I tried to find some more recent space sims and plumped for X2: The Threat. It pays more of a homage to Elite than X-Wing but has a fair amount of combat in it. None of the games individual elements (combat, exploring, trading, empire building) are really outstanding but together they formed a nice package I played for months on end. I've recently (as in yesterday) decided to get back into it's sequel X3: Reunion because its now been patched to have all the gamplay from X2 and then some. When released it was essentially a prettier but less functional version of X2 which was very disappointing.

Other than that the Total War series has a warm place in my heart. Played Rome last year and loved it. Who would have thunk that a Real Time Strategy game could actually incorporate, you know, actual strategy! It was a shock to the system after playing Command and Conquer's 6-tanks-beats-5-tanks approach to strategy.

[Stomski]

I was just about to start a PC thread this morning and came in to this!

WHY would I be starting a PC thread? I just upgraded, that's why. My mobo is now pretty much maxed out with 2GB OCZ 2-5-3-6 DDR 3200 RAM and an ATI x1950 Pro AGP. Weeeeeeeeeeee...

Much cheaper than going for a whole new setup which supports PCI-e.

[Cullen]

That's really funny as I've just bought the exact same RAM! How much did it and the graphics card set you back? What's your other PC specs?

[Stomski]

RAM and Graphics card from DABS at £86 and £95 respectively.

Other graphics card options for those of us clinging on to our AGP mobos are the GeForce 7600GT or the daddy of AGP cards... The GeForce 7950GT.

7600GT is pretty weak compared to the other two. The 7950 isn't too much more powerful than the ATI x1950Pro, but is about £50 more. So for performance/price considerations I went for the ATI.

HOWEVER... the x1950 Pro is quite power hungry and people do have problems with substandard PSUs. The box asks for a 450W PSU with 30A on the main 12V line... With my limited testing, my 425W with 25A on the 12V (HiperPower 3s425) is standing up ok.

Although, OCZ do a good budget 600W PSU (StealthXStream) which retails at about £50, and I'd imagine the GeForce 7950GT requires a lot of juice too.

Rest of my box is 3.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 Prescott, ABIT IS7-E2 mobo and SBLive Platinum for sound.

[Cullen]

I'm on a ATI 9600 Pro which is now off the bottom of the minimum specs for most modern day games. That x1950Pro looks the biz though. Maybe in the New Year....

Otherwise I'm current running an Athlon XP 2600 in a Asus A7N8X Deluxe with on-board sound. My PC is old

[kayevcee]

I'm still using an Nvidia FX5200 that's about three years old now. It runs everything I've got pretty well, except (as I discovered last night) Prey, which is a slide show even at 640x480 with EVERY graphical feature turned off. It's also a bit rubbish, so I'm not that bothered. I did buy a 7600GT from Dabs but it was a dud so I had to send it back for a refund. I may try again sometime soon, as I really want to play Bioshock but the demo refuses to even load on my current setup.

Anyway, favourite games:

Deus Ex and System Shock 2, for the same reasons as Karl no doubt. Far Cry for similar reasons. I quite enjoyed the Wing Commander games back in the day but since I have no joystick at the moment and find them unplayable without one I don't put them on very often.

In the less-sneaky-more-shooty department, I have a deep and abiding love for the sheer insanity that is Serious Sam, and I've played Quake 4 to completion several times. It's great fun- I just wish it was a bit longer.

-Nick

[legios]

cullen said:

I'm right with you on Freespace 1 and 2, plus the X-COM games. Fan-bloody-tastic. Don't know if you know Karl but there's a Battlestar Galactica (the reimagined series) mod called Beyond the Red Line built using a heavily modified Freespace 2 engine. It's only got a demo at the moment but I heartily recommend you check it out. Freespace 2 really was the pinacle of the dead and much lamented space combat sim genre, even more so than the X-Wing games that spawned it.

I was keeping my radar on "Beyond the Red Line" for a while, back when I was still interested in the new Battlestar series. They've got a fair idea there and a darned good engine to build it on. I suspect however that, like the Macross mod for Homeworld 2, it is going to remain in an unfinished state for the forseeable future. A shame really, because it does look like they have done an impressive amount of work.

I'd agree with you that Freespace was pretty much a thoroughbred "Best of breed" in its category. It is like they sat down and made a list of all the best bits in the X-Wing series, Wing Commander franchise etc and then built on that starting point. It also had a really good, pared down narrative. I remember quite enjoying the story of the original species and feeling like it wasn't a foregone conclusion that "our side" was going to stop the Shivans conclusively.

(Funnily enough, unlike Nick I find Freespace and the Wing Commander series more playable without a joystick than I do with. I'm a much more precise pilot using the cursor keys than I am with a side-stick. Maybe it's because when I played Wing Commander I and II joystick ports were not common, and not so cheap either. That probably just shows I'm old and probably need to be grounded really doesn't it?).

A couple of years back I tried to find some more recent space sims and plumped for X2: The Threat. It pays more of a homage to Elite than X-Wing but has a fair amount of combat in it. None of the games individual elements (combat, exploring, trading, empire building) are really outstanding but together they formed a nice package I played for months on end. I've recently (as in yesterday) decided to get back into it's sequel X3: Reunion because its now been patched to have all the gamplay from X2 and then some. When released it was essentially a prettier but less functional version of X2 which was very disappointing.

I've heard some good things about the "X" franchise but have never had a machine that would really support it - my current laptop I suspect would fall over in a faint if presented with X3. The somewhat open-ended nature of it, and the fact that it was a homage to one of the greats ("Elite") does interest me though. I suspect it would be one of those games that I could very easily get lost in.

Other than that the Total War series has a warm place in my heart. Played Rome last year and loved it. Who would have thunk that a Real Time Strategy game could actually incorporate, you know, actual strategy! It was a shock to the system after playing Command and Conquer's 6-tanks-beats-5-tanks approach to strategy.

I've only played the first one in the series - but I played it half-to-death at the time. I have a real distate for "Tank Rush" gameplay (probably why I don't enjoy things like C&C and Starcraft), and the fact that you had to learn to use your troops appropriately - and not think you can beat a formation of Warrior Monks backed up with a couple of units of Yari Samurai by throwing a huge mob of Ashigaru at them was refreshing. Like the fact that it is almost two games in one as well, with the strategic turns for calm thought as to how best to pacify the land, and then the chaos of trying to yoink a great mob of armed samurai around the battlefield in some semblance of a plan. Sadly I don't have a machine with enough oomph to run "Rome" - it would be touch and go if I could coax it into running "medieval" I think.

An honourable mention that I overlooked yesterday is the original "Ground Control" - another non-tankrush strategy game where you can't outbuild the AI, you have to out-position and outflank them. One of the first games I can remember to include the possibility of fratricide - unwise deployment can leave your troops taking each other out in Blue-on-Blue incidents. I like it's "these are the troops you have, there are no more coming, this is your mission objective. Get on with it." approach to gameplay. It makes you think about what you have, and how you can use that to acheive your objective . The fact that any squads you lose are gone for the duration of the campaign is rather good as well. It encourages the grey matter into action rather than just the mouse hand for mass-banding and clicking.

Karl

[KnightBeat]

I've been spending a lot of time playing Crayon Physics recently.

[Stomski]

Quake 4 to completion several times. It's great fun- I just wish it was a bit longer.

See this is the thing... Everyone today is all "OH MY GOD, YOU GOTTA DO SOMETHING NEW"... And Half Life 2 to me that was the game - EVERY SINGLE LEVEL and as such the game felt very disjointed to me, like I was playing 16 or so seperate games.

Quake 4 on the other hand... RUN AND SHOOT STUFF WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! OLDEE SKOOOOOLE!!!!1111!!!

But I'm only 2 levels into that, so I may get bored soon.

[Stomski]

I MUST ADD THAT PORTAL IS FECKING AWESOME.

For $20 on Steam, that's a bargain. I can't flaw the game at all.

[legios]

stomski said:

I MUST ADD THAT PORTAL IS FECKING AWESOME.

Cake is always good...

This thread seems to have started something in my mind. I've ended up dusting off "Conflict:Freespace" and I'm currently playing my way through it again. I'm being a good boy - even though I remember all the controls I am playing through all the training missions. The way I see it, as I haven't logged any flight hours in the last year I need to be recertified before I can take an Apollo or a Valkyrie out into space - let alone into combat. Good fun though. There is nothing like the sense of being up against an enemy holding all the high cards to make you feel like you are working for your victories.

Karl

[Gav]

StarCraft y'all!

[kayevcee]

AHAHAHAHA! I have a huge pile of new bits to add to my PC to make it fast enough to take off! Now to fit them without breaking anything and find out of my power supply is strong enough to run them!

The motherboard alone has a 100 page manual!

*whimper*

-Nick

[KoshNaranek]

I think I'll add some new bits to my PC in the new year, it's really starting to slow down these days.

I've been addicted to the CSI games recently, spent waaaayyyy too many late nights tracking down ficticious murderers.

- Tony