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What Game Do You Love?
It's that time of year again, when a person's fancy turns to new games. It's still nice to think of old flames, though, and eToyChest wonders about games you've loved. From the article: "In 1992 I was spending time getting my gaming legs on a then-aging 486 PC. It was loud, ugly, and far from state-of-the-art. But it could still run games off the shelf, and when a friend of mine brought over what he was calling the "best role-playing game he had played since Ultima V", I knew I had to check it out. What began that afternoon stands out as one of the most important events in my life as a game, for as I installed each of the two high density diskettes comprising Sir-Tech's Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, I somehow knew that I was in for a treat. What followed were two years of swords, sorcery, and the slaying of many humanoid rats." So what game do you still remember fondly, even if you haven't played for quite a while?
Half-Life blew me away
Half-Life 2 blew me away again
Other worthy mentions
M.U.L.E.
Diablo
Quake 1/2/3/4
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
This was of course back in the day when LucasArts made good games. If only that was still true.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
Doom was the first game that really blew me away, and I still have a copy of it that I play from time to time. What made it even better was that there were a host of different maps for it, so even when you got to the point of being bored with the original, there was always something new. It's nice to see that there's still ongoing development for it.
Thank you ever so much for sharing that.
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Dungeon Master" on the Atari ST was the best game of its time. It was a very early ST game and was a real eye-opener for anyone used to 8-bit computers. It probably sold almost as many STs as Doom did for PCs. The use of the mouse was perfect and I can still recall many of the rune sequences to cast spells even now, almost 20 years later.
Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
These are the main ones:
Fallout
Quake 1
Privateer
All three Descent games
Commander Keen
All three Thief games
Mechwarrior 2
Tyrian
I hate making lists like this since I always know I've forgotten lots of great games.
... I'm a turn-based gamer. Reaction-time games are just not as compelling for me. That promise of "just one more turn" just leads me on ... there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.
Civ 2 had a lot of improvements but the basic concepts were in Civ 1. I found Civ 3 to be boring ...
Similarly, Heroes of Might And Magic 1 was wonderful; I skipped 2; HoMM 3 was an improvement in every way but still basically the same concept; HoMM 4 wasn't worth the upgrade, to me at least.
Perhaps there's some basic "fun" concept at the core of any game that you can mess with, and you HAVE to mess with if your income depends on continued sales, but messing with doesn't necessarily mean improvement.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Uh uh. Computers were for work. Spreadsheets, databases, programming. Well, OK, word processing for the character sheets for the home-brew dice-and-pencil RPG we played. Consoles? Fuggeditaboutit. Kid stuff, right?
Until my buddy asked me to advise him on the purchase of a new PC. When I asked him what he was looking to use it for, he named all the regular Office stuff, and then added, "And of course, games. I want to be able to play games."
So I studied up on graphics cards -- in the computer magazine articles I had always skipped prior to then -- and made my recommendations. When his box arrived, naturally he invited me over to configure it, for a few beers. In the course of my new research, I learned that the "Game of the Year" in everybody's graphics categories was something called "Mechwarrior II," so on my way over I picked up a copy for him to christen the new box with. He had a state-of-the-art graphics card and monitor, so I wanted to see what a state-of-the-art game looked like running on it.
When the opening cinema played, "I Am Jade Falcon," and that unbelievable by anybody's musical standards score hit, our jaws hit the ground and we did this kind of Beavis-and-Butthead-Watching-NIN-Video take to each other. It was nothing like anything we old dice-throwers had expected in the least.
So, um, yeah, about 400 BattleTech miniatures, countless PC games, and several dozen console games later, I guess I'd have to say that "MechWarrior II" was the most memorable, if not the most, influential, in my experience.
Star Control 2 is one heck of a game. Exquisite sense of humor, great story about galaxy-wide genocide, ancient technology, and what not. Part 3 sucked, though. The "Melee" part of the game is also fun. It is being resurrected for contemporary Windows and Linux systems at http://sc2.sourceforge.net/.
Rise of the Triad - best quirky mutliplayer experience
Duke Nukem 3D - best multiplayer FPS (out of the box)
Total Annihilation - best RTS. Ever. Well, until Supreme Commander comes out.
Full Throttle - The last great adventure game.
Half-Life - best single-player FPS.
Spider Solitaire - best waste of time.
Civilization II - best improvement upon a great game
Medieval: Total War - best Braveheart simulator.
X-Wing - Most entertaining space sim
Babylon 5: I've Found Her - most realistic space (combat) sim
X-COM: UFO Defense - most addictive game, best turn-based combat
Honorable mention: Civilization, Master of Orion, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Half-Life 2, Unreal, Far Cry, X-COM: Apocalypse, Lode Runner, M.U.L.E., Yar's Revenge, Adventure, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander series, Jane's flight sims, Falcon 3.0 and 4.0, Sid Meier's Pirates, Homeworld, Homeworld 2, a few dozen others I can't think of at the time.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Come on guys, doesn't anyone remember Leela, Durandal, and that crazy bastard Tycho? And all is not lost if you don't happen to have an old Performa sitting around--come join us at source.bungie.org and work on Aleph One, the open source version, now available for Linux, Windows, and just about anything else you can think of! (Some nut even has it working on Irix!)
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Those were the best games.
Yes! But emphasis on the "were."
I love anything by Square-Enix now.
That does not compute.
Go here and head to the download section; the author of Tyrian released it as freeware a while ago.
And, oddly enough, both for the same reasons: planning. Falcon 3 had a mission planning mode where you would set waypoints, speeds, weapon loads, etc. for you and up to 8 of your wingmen. I would spend 2 hours setting up the mission, and 20 minutes or less flying it. I never could land on hi-fidelity mode. Crashed just about every time.
Same with SC2K, what I liked was getting the freeway onramps to look right. Or I'd spend $250K to deepen a river so I could get a suspension bridge on it. The reverse interest money cheat made sure I wasn't constrained by cost.
It wasn't really the way the games were meant to be played, but I loved them for it.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.