Top 20 PC Games on Windows XP

ApacheVE writes "Voodoo Extreme has up a story called Generation XP: Top 20 Games of the Last Generation. They call out some of the best games released in the Windows XP era, to mark the passing into the 'next generation' of PC gaming this past week. Some favorites include Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament 2004, Civilization IV, World of Warcraft and other titles that helped shape the era." Any titles you see missing from the list? The XP years were truly great, as far as PC titles went; how long do you think it will be before Vista has enough market penetration to make a difference in gaming?

Comments

The Goods

[TriezGamer]

20) Rise of Nations
19) Halo: Combat Evolved
18) Rome: Total War
17) Unreal Tournament 2004
16) Medal of Honor Allied Assault
15) Neverwinter Nights
14) Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
13) Command & Conquer: Generals
12) Guild Wars
11) Civilization IV
10) Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
09) Doom 3
08) F.E.A.R.
07) Company of Heroes
06) Battlefield 1942
05) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
04) Call of Duty
03) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
02) Half-Life 2
01) World of Warcraft

Re:The Goods

[Sosarian]

Thank you, 20 pages of barely readable text with 5 times more ads than story was not worth reading that.

Re:The Goods

[RogueyWon]

Hmm... thoughts on each of these in turn:

20) Rise of Nations - yeah, ok, this seems fair enough. It's a nice concept and still a fun game to play. I may even have moved it a little higher up the list. Graphics are dated quite badly now, so a sequel wouldn't go amiss.

19) Halo - w... t... f... - sure, the Xbox version was great, even if its own sequel does comprehensively out-shine it, but the PC version always felt like a nasty hack at best.

18) Rome: Total War - reasonable pick and probably in about the right place on the list. Very solid game.

17) Unreal Tournament 2004 - this made me go "hmm" at first, but on balance, I think I could live with this here. It was definitely the best iterration of the series. I'm not quite sure how TFA manages to claim the original is better.

16) Medal of Honour Allied Assault - I guess you have to include one of the WW2 shooters and I guess this one is the obvious candidate. If this were the only one on the list, I could have been perfectly happy. Unfortunately, if you look further down...

15) Neverwinter Nights - ooooh, tricky one. On the one hand, the game as released, straight out of box, is pretty damned poor, with an original campaign that falls waaaaay short of the usual Bioware standards. The sequel is massively better in this respect. However, I will grant you that, with two solid expansions and a huge mass of mods available, NWN has grown way beyond what originally came out of the box.

14) Max Payne 2 - Can be completed in about 4-6 hours by an average player and has no replay value. No thanks.

13) Command and Conquer: Generals - Oh god no. Command and Conquer with a slight graphical facelift, but none of the production values that made the very early installments in the series great. Gameplay that was outdated compared to other RTSes even at release.

12) Guild Wars - not played it, so can't really comment.

11) Civilisation IV - frankly, the Civ games have never done it for me. However, I will grant that they do seem to push the requisite buttons for an awful lot of people, so happy to let this one stand.

10) Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos - yeah, good pick. Probably the best of the small-scale RTSes from the XP era. I'm mystified as to why the article says the controls were tricky, though. They were basically the same as any other RTS around, if not slightly better due to the decent hotkeys system.

9) Doom 3: Yep, decent pick. I know a lot of people found fault with it, but this game scared the living shit out of me (at least for the first half of the game). I'd probably have put this in the bottom end of the list, though, given the lack of variety. I actually felt Quake 4 was better, so may just have substituted that altogether.

8) F.E.A.R: again, a decent pick just on account of atmosphere. Plus the graphics were beautiful and the AI probably the best we've seen in an fps.

7) Company of Heroes: Hmm... maybe. Personally, I'd have substituted Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War for this, though. They're basically the same game underneath but, particularly with the expansions, I find Dawn of War slightly deeper. Still, there's no denying that Company of Heroes is very, very pretty.

6) Battlefield 1942: Yes, I'd probably go along with this, on the proviso that all of the sequels and expansion packs are excluded. BF2 in particular was an utter crock.

5)Knights of the Old Republic: Yes, definitely. Proof that Lucas should have let Bioware write Episodes 1-3.

4) Call of Duty: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO. What the fuck is it with this game? Why the hell do it and its sequels continue to attact such plaudits. An inferior, dumbed down Medal of Honour clone which brought nothing new to the genre at all. On a related note, why do all these countless WW2 fpses only feature battles from the second half of WW2 which the Allies won (oh, and Pearl Harbour). I grow tired of the "inevitable march to victory" feel of these games and feel that it actually fails to do history justice.

3) E

Re:The Goods

[GeckoX]

Oblivion better on 360? You have got to be kidding me.

Especially considering the reason you give.

The 360 version has massive control related issues. The resolution is a huge problem.

And the kicker: Show Stopper Bugs.

How can you possibly state that the bugs present in the PC version are a bigger problem than those on the 360? With the 360, you hit one of those bugs, and your game is over. And there are a LOT of these bugs.

On the PC:
a) patches. Patches fix bugs. Bugs go away. Gameplay gets better.
b) console. Console fixes or allows one to work around bugs and carry on with your game.
c) mods. Mods are what make Oblivion really shine.

You are the very first person I have run across that actually prefers the 360 version. That statement alone suggests I should take every game related statement of yours with a large dose of salt.

19: Halo - what the hell?

[EvilCabbage]

Seriously. A bloody ordinary Windows port of one of the more dull console shooters I've had a tinker with in years. About halfway through I just couldn't fight back the tears of boredom anymore.

I'd imagine millions of people still play Solitaire, by the 'merits' Halo has, I'm fairly certain it deserves a spot in this arbitrary list too.

Halo?! Doom 3?!

[ChaosDiscord]

Halo? A highly repetitive game that features midget aliens that ran around like toddlers on cocaine? A dark future where the elite special forces get issues crap guns by default? Sure, it was an exception FPS for consoles, but that has more to do with the high level of suck of FPSs on consoles.

Doom 3? A single trick pony, not that "sucks that in the future we'll forget how to attach lights to guns" is much of a pony to start with. It's gorgeous, but it's a crappy game. Game design has moved on since the original Doom.

It's not that there aren't better games. Where is Far Cry, which blew Halo's outdoor scenes away (It jumps the shark midway through, but there is still a lot of great gameplay)? How about Quake 4, which took Doom 3's amazing technology and coupled it with rock solid gameplay (and features the radical idea that a future military might issue its troops useful assault rifles!). NOLF2? Return to Castle Wolfenstein?

*Bah*

The List and My Commentary

[Bios_Hakr]

20 -- Rise of Nations. It was ok. I really liked the nukes.
19 -- Halo. WTF? It was great on the XBOX but not a good FPS by PC standards.
18 -- Rom Total War.
17 -- UT2k4. Why this version? All of them were really good. Sequels should be disqualified.
16 -- MoH Allied Assault. It was ok. I really hated the way the game cutscened a lot. And the fact that it forced a tutorial sucked.
15 -- NWN. Great game and very modable. Still play this after, what, 5 years.
14 -- Max Payne. Loved bullet time.
13 -- C&C Generals. Never played it.
12 -- Guild Wars. MMO without fees. Awesome.
11 -- Civ4. After Civ3, I was really not willing to buy another Civ game. I still play Alpha Centuari though.
10 -- Warcraft 3. Not a big fan of RTS. Never tried it.
9 -- Doom3. Never played it. Too dark. Duct tape mod really showed how dumb game designers are. And WTF with batteries that last 10 seconds?
8 -- FEAR. Stupid name but great game. The demo gave away almost all the scary parts though. Bullet time and the nail gun was awesome.
7 -- Company of Heroes. Very fun for a RTS. Still, never played it more than a few hours.
6 -- BF1942. Played the shit out of this at LAN parties. Once Desert Combat was out, played the shit out of it again. The follow-ups sucked bad though.
5 -- KOTOR. Another port from XBOX. It was fun. Loved the moddable lightsaber.
4 -- Call of Duty. I was really burned out on WW2 games at this point. God, can we get another war?
3 -- Oblivion. Something about a first-person RPG just sucks. After 10 minutes of not knowing where the last rat was, I gave up and uninstalled it.
2 -- Half-Life 2. I guess it was OK. I only bought it because of CS:S
1 -- WoW. This game is a lot of fun and very social. Most of my friends play this to extremes. Once I got high-level, I quit. I don't have time to do the same 6+ hour crawl 20 times to get the uber sword of pwnage. I really loved the fact that I get credit for *not* playing. Makes leveling much easier.

So, where was X2 or X3? Both were lots of fun. How about GalCiv or GalCiv2? Empire at War was a blast as was Hero Quest. Flight simulators (all sims really) were missing. GTR, Falcon Allied Force, Flight Sim X, LOMAC, and IL2 were a ton of fun. As was Silent Hunter 3. Realistic sims are, for me, what really keeps me updating my PC. Everything else can be duplicated on a console. The first time you complete the ramp start in Falcon, you'll know the PC is king.

Re:The List and My Commentary

[cephyn]

How about the 6 day war? Haven't seen any games on that one. Play as the arab alliance, see if you can win.

Or what about Gulf War II? Starts out as a war game, morphs into a military/city strategy game. A cross between command and conquer and simcity2000. See if you can stabilize Iraq before it can happen in real life.

Win 98 FTW

[regular_gonzalez]

The Vista era was good, but nothing compared to the Windows 98 era (though I don't know that using OSes as a quantitative factor for determining gaming eras is particularly valid). I'll stack up Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Planescape: Torment, Starcraft, Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, and Grim Fandango against the best games from *any* era.

Re:Win 98 FTW

[CastrTroy]

I don't think that C&C gets enough recognition in the RTS genre. It's my favourite series, and I really don't get why more people don't like like it. My biggest problem with most of the other ones are too many resources. In C&C you had tiberium, and that's all you had to collect. In Warcraft 2, you had wood, gold, and oil, and you need varying amounts of each for building units. Then there's games like starcraft where you have to constantly click around your base figuring out which buidlings you can finally upgrade, and which ones you can start doing research on. On C&C everything could be controlled on the right hand part of your screen. No reason to click on your barracks to build a soldier, or you factory to build a jeep.

XP?!

[iminplaya]

Hasn't everybody upgraded to Vista by now?

So...

[FlyByPC]

Every. Last. One. of them involves violence and combat?

Wow. That's sad.

Re:So...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Every. Last. One. of them involves violence and combat?

Wow. That's sad.

Most video games do, particularly high-budget games which are likely to win awards. It's difficult to add depth to puzzle/card/city-builder games (though there have been some notable exceptions), so most high-budget games are those which simulate "reality" (either our world or a fantasy world). Once you've done that, the question becomes: what do you do in this dream world? The answer is simple: you do something you can't do in the real world. You fight an alien invasion, become a special agent, complete mythical quests, engage in futuristic arena combat, steal cars, or build an empire.

Non-violent games generally fall into a few categories: sports (Madden is one of the top selling games, year after year), racing (GT3 is the best selling PS2 game), card/casino (Hold 'Em is insanely popular online, and Solitare is the most distributed and played video game ever), builder/tycoon, and puzzle.

Sports games don't do well on PCs. They play better with controllers and on a big screen with friends. Racing games - ditto - few have a wheel, and no one wants to play a racing game with a keyboard. Card/casino and puzzle games are unlikely to make a Top 20 list (not that they are bad, they just aren't typically deep big-budget titles). As for builder/tycoon games, there have been some standout titles (Sim City, for one), but there hasn't been anything spectacular in the last 5 years - mostly just sequels and rehashes.

So, what does that leave? RTS, FPS, RPG, and MMO games. Guess what? They almost always involve at least a minimal amount of violence.

We did leave one insanely popular PC game out, though. The Sims is the best-selling PC title of all time, and it isn't really violent at all.

No GTA?

[4D6963]

Not a single GTA? Sounds like either of the 3 last one was pretty important, and GTA:III on its own was quite a breakthrough, not to mention the commercial success and popularity of each episode.

Re:Far Cry

[Judge_Fire]

I'd put Far Cry above HL2 and D3 in my list.

Far Cry allowed exploration and variation in moving around and solving scenarios. The latter two tried to be interactive movies, where story kept you from stepping outside the preset ride, sometimes in really ugly ways. They must be nice as a first FPS experience, but they're not about playing so much as shooting on que.

Far Cry had a crap story with great gameplay and I love it :)

13 FPS Games?

[pugugly]

I'm finding something odd that 13 of the 20 'great' games are basically first person shooters and none of them are from small companies.

This is like a review of beverages that argues between coke and pepsi, or musical talent that's really concerned about whether Britney or Christina are better.

Not that some of these aren't good games, but he doesn't even show any variation in taste in the FPS games - he's got, what, four FPS's about "Let's go kill the aliens", and Thief or No one lives forever didn't make the list?

I'm sorry submitter, but your gene pool license has been revoked - you're no longer allowed to reproduce. Remember, just because we're making you eligible for a Darwin award doesn't mean it *has* to be fatal.

Not if you cooperate.

Pug

Re:Windows XP games? Really?

[Blondie-Wan]

I don't know about Linux, but more than half those titles are available for Macintosh, actually:

20) Rise of Nations
19) Halo: Combat Evolved
17) Unreal Tournament 2004
16) Medal of Honor Allied Assault
15) Neverwinter Nights
13) Command & Conquer: Generals
11) Civilization IV
10) Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
09) Doom 3
06) Battlefield 1942
05) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
04) Call of Duty
01) World of Warcraft

So, thirteen of the twenty are available for the Mac, I'm surprised and pleased to say. If only I had more money and time for games...