Dominions 3 - huge scale, insane depth, fantastic synergy between magic, armies and artifacts. Rich, wonderful lore.
AI wars - the game has a true AI, also the asymmetric game design is both bold and innovative
Minecraft - I got bored by it, but Notch sure showed those corporate drones a thing about game design
Dwarf fortress - a true simulation, mind-boggling scale, maybe most ambitious game of all times
Tangle in the Web - interactive fiction from Andrew Plotkin, but of the finest quality. Storytelling at its best - text only
Fall from Heaven 2 (Civ4 mod) - the lore is just charming, the diversity in factions is awesome
Dreamweb - one of a kind atmosphere
Another World - quite an accomplishment when it was released, unique, mysterious
Dragontorc
Perihelion
Frozen Synapse
Chess - best abstract strategy ever
Not sure if this got mentioned already but M.U.L.E. was truly an awesome game for its time and a game I considered groundbreaking.
I think I'll play it again for old time's sake. ^^
http://www.planetmule.com/
I had forgotten one... another very early game by Sierra Online called Phantasmagoria.... Crude graphics, but one hell of a great horror based storyline.... it would have made a really awesome movie...
I have been trying to get a copy of Phantasmagoria for awhile now. I don't think it will play on newer OS's though. I hear it is a great game.
I liked almost all games which I used to play earlier.
1) Might and Magic - Clouds of Xeen. I wanted to get Darkside of Xeen, but couldnt find it then.
2) Realms of Arkania - Star Trail. Tactical battles were a time hog but it seemed fun.
3) King's Quest / Space Quest type games - Good adventure / story telling. Those games should have been made today with HD graphics.
4) Wing Commander II and III - II cause it was fun gameplay and story. III cause of its Luke Skywalker cinematics.
5) Total Annihilation - Very easy to get into and loads of fun. Simplified resources made the focus be on important things - Building and Combat.
6) Heroes of Might and Magic III - I wish EWoM had its siege and spell mechanics. HoMM seemed to lose its way with IV.
7) XCom - Best Squad based combat. I used to jump in reflex when sudden "reaction fire" came from the aliens. I liked the isometric style, line of sight, destructible environments, variety of research and combat.
8) Age of Empires I & II - Multiplayer with 2 other players on a LAN was a blast.
9) Mech Commander - Very realistic Mechs in Isometric style. Large variety of mechs and missions. Only thing missing were flying mechs (They could only jump).
And have to add - 10) Final Fantasy VII and VIII on the PC. FF-7 for its story, and FF-8 for the first usage of realistic 3D characters. FF-X was the best, even if it was on PS-2 and not on the PC. I liked FF-12 as well, the last hurrah of PS-2. Havent purchased a PS-3 yet, although I was tempted two years ago with the FF-13/PS3 bundle.
I looked this morning and found a website that sells older games... and they have Phantasmagoria for 10 bucks!!!
The link is: http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/phantasmagoria
According to the website it an be played on Windows Vista, XP and 7.... so hopefully it'll work. I can't do anything until the end of the week, but then I'm buying and downloading a copy... I'll let you know how it works on my Windows 7 machine.
Damn good crowd here
From Dust trailer seems epic...
All I'm missing here is really Serious Sam and Fallout 1 and 2.Don''t see much mention of them
Serious Sam for daring to be a pure arcade shooter with great graphics and a fun story from a small company in Croatia.It was like Duke Nukem Forever as it perhaps should have been if it was released back then. The tough-guy was like him.
Fallout 1-2 for obvious reasons.
Probably GTA 3 and Vampires Bloodlines for their pretty epic take on scale.
Ah I just can't play them old horror games. Either it should be textbased/very simple pictures or it should wait until at least year 2000...
Anyone ever play Buck Rogers on Sega Genesis...that game was awesome...I need to play that shit again.
Some of my favorites will always be, Wasteland & Sentinel Worlds I. Both of those I once in a while, replay through and Wasteland is pretty much the grandfather of the Fallout series.
I remember playing C&C for the first time. I was like, there is just no way to screw this game up!
Man was I naive.
In the movie "Soylant Green", the character "funiture" was given a stand up video game as a gift. That was 1973 and the game was a 2D ship flying around in space shooting asteroids. Very very bare bones graphics. Sounds familiar. But there was nothing like it in 73, and I remember wishing that there was.
maybe move dominions 3 toward the bottom of the list... dominions 2 belongs here really. I read that and immediately struggled to read the rest of your list. Dominions 3 shouldn't even be touching this list. That said, strange to find so many mixed reviews. Some are say its god awful. Others give it like 80/100. For me, I bought it because I wanted more of dominions 2. Its not... at all.
other side note - the op even posting here? looks like a necro'd thread. Ah well.
These days find all games except Sins and Guild Wars boring. Wish I liked some great games like those listed here, but I am just spoiled.
Skyrim is going to go down as a all time great.
It's the only game to come out that has stopped me from playing Sins.
Let's see, gonna go in a somewhat historical order, along with some thoughts on each at the time...
Pong (home version) had it at my Dad's when I was a kid in the 70s, couldn't believe it.
Asteroids on original Atari... kept me glued, simple game, but I was hooked.
long stretch of time with no holy crap... I was gaming this whole time, and it was fun, but no defining moments
Text adventures - Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Beyond the Titanic, et al, hmmmm, what the hell somehow I never played Zork!
SimCity - first time with world building, loved it!
Civ2 - I think no explanation is necessary here.
Ascendancy - Wasn't the best game, but I really felt drawn into it.
MoO2 - What a great specimen of a game!
GLQuake/GLQuakeworld - Had just bought my first 3DFx card, first game I was playing was Monster truck Madness, then Carmack unleashed the GL version of Quake, and the mayhem that was multi-player quake. Wow! What a rush! My first experience with online community was also during this at Voodooextreme (RIP "Wicked"), Operation3dfx, and the others, the pc gaming scene was hot!
Diablo - played my ass off in this game via Kali. Think I still have my Kali codes for 2 accounts somewhere.. one for work and one for home.
EverQuest - are you f'ing kidding me! all these people playing this great looking 3d game online together, damn this is cool.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - *drool*
Heroes of Might & Magic - Don't remember which ones I particularly liked the most, but I know there was a time I was hooked hard on these games. Think they were the earlier releases though, haven't played these in a while.
Civ IV - to date, in my opinion, still the finest 4x land based game there is
Civ IV FfH2 - the finest version of Civ IV there is!
GalCiv2 - holy crap, this game is fun! Ship designing... yum!
Need to throw in some very honorable mentions as well... the Sierra Quest games, Leisure Suit Larry, Warlords, Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II in Junior High in the early 80's, sure I've missed some others as well.
edit: added in HoMM and Warlords reference
edit2: alright, one more to add: F-19 Stealth Fighter, first flying game where I actually kept at it and got decent at the game.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned The Sims yet. Will Wright was a genius with this concept. It's so stupidly simple, yet so addictive. Almost all of the Expansion were worth getting. Maxis worked this charm into the games that only they could do.
On the other hand, The Sims 3 series right now is not great. EA shelved Maxis at the end of The Sims 2, created it's own developer team (not nearly as much talent and creativity as Maxis), and is now milking the series. The base game was pretty solid, but it's taken them five attempts to finally get a good, solid expansion pack that is worth the money and not filled with bugs (they're often working on three things at a time). Add in the ridiculous amount and DLC, and well...
Also, maybe Fallen Enchantress?
That's not even out, so we have no idea if it will be groundbreaking or memorable.
I just hope Stardock hasn't lost its touch.
Well I just got a copy of Phantasmagoria. Me and my friend play together, using Skype. As they said at the time of it's creation, this game is boss.
OK, maybe I didn't want to admit it publicly, but I'm a closet Sims2 fan... hehehe
I have the full Sims2 set, with all the expansions, and like SINS, it's one of my "fallback" games. No matter what I'm doing, what I'm playing, when I'm done and getting bored, I either fire up SINS, or the Sims2, depending on my mood. They're the two games I couldn't live without... lol.
Oh, FYI, have no interest in Sim3 yet...
tellin ya... it would made a great movie!!! hehehe
Company of Heroes
Settlers 7
Sims 3 (Pets)
Risk
man where do I begin?
First game I ever played was duck hunt, soon followed by the classic mario bros.
First computer game I played was broderbund's where in the world is carmen san diego. That game made you feel like you were a detective and with nothing but black and white highly pixelated simple images, and charming sounds.
Warcraft 2 - this game started my RTS interest
Red alert 1, 2 and 3- great games, i enjoyed how this game felt more down to earth then the warcraft series.
Ceasar 2 - Great game, I played it so much i had it taken away from me and became "computer grounded", far worse then actually being grounded.
Pharoah - being able to build pyramids and other wonders and providing the supplies was...amazing. The family concept itself was immersive, so that missions seemed tied together as you follow your family history. I haven't played a city game as good as this one.
Populous - It was a fun game. This started the beginning of my god complex, which was to soon die off when I realized that girls were more important.
Dungeon Keeper - Its fun being bad, except when you slap the wrong demon...and bile demons were disgusting even with the cruddy graphics. tip: don't slap your reaper.
Outpost 2 - I loved this game, between surviving natural disasters and the like, the missions were hard and the idea was great. I will never consider a space game complete until I can build an outpost similar to outpost 2 and fly into the stars as well.
Homeworld - One of the best stories combined with gameplay i've ever played.
Final fantasy 7, 8 and 10.
Final fantasy tactics, because it took up way to much of my time and had a better story the second play through.
Pokemon - because gigapets sucked and fighting monsters was oh so fun.
Command and conquer tiberian sun: great missions, great art, a bit of city building mixed in for good measure. I LOVED this game.
Morrowind- i'll never forget the time when that guy fell from the sky doing something dumb and i stole his stuff and killed myself jumping across the map. A video game has never made me laugh so hard.
Diablo 1 - first videogame that scared me
Diablo 2 - great game, lost a little bit of the magic of diablo 1 though. much more epic in scope to make it overall more enjoyable.
Masters of orion - I loved this game, and played the heck out of it. I never liked the crystal guys.
Castles - a really fun simple castle game that was far ahead of its time
Lords of the realm 2 - first game that made me feel like a lord.
Stronghold - Best castle sim i've played.
Stronghold kingdoms - because what it did right was groundbreaking, what it did wrong was sadly too much. First game that I played that gave me a vote, and helped me to realize how little of a real vote in the political system i actually have. First game that I actually FELT like I was an evil warlord, because you have to have real human vassals to bitch slap when you are angry, which I did with frequency. i was enemies with everyone while I was lord of the province of southwest england and I failed to become the king of england and I got wiped out. Good memories.
Call of duty 2- the only FPS i've ever been Very good at, and man what i would do to you with a shotgun was unreal.
Halo - because it HAD to be experienced. It has a very good plot and very finely tuned combat.
Oblivion - lost some of the magic of morrowind, but it was the prettiest game i'd ever seen at that point, and for a man on a submarine I will always remember huddling in darkness under the water, harvesting my alchemical ingredients and fighting deadra. The only flowers i saw for 7 months
World of warcraft, for being the single biggest time sink in my life, probably never to be repeated again unless the gaming industry gets its act together.
Sins of a solar empire- the only RTS/RT4X to hold my attention for more then a year (yes even starcraft), and counting....
Total War Series - Good group of games
Europa Universalis - Great game
Civilization 2 - overhyped, but fun..not nearly as fun as other games of its time though, imo.
Risk- way better as a video game, imo.
Baldurs gate 2- for being a game that had the longest main quest i've ever played, with a real sonofa as a final boss. First time i'd actually lost a final boss battle in an RPG. Damn banshee wail! I beat him by running in with my cleric to summon a gate, then running my whole party away while john fought it and used up his spells, all the while i sent other summoned nasties in to take hits. He survived this cheap tactic and almost killed my party but I was able to pull through it with no losses and almost nothing left. Quite a good battle. Also, the dragons were actually TOUGH in that game...whats with all these other games and their weak dragons...looking at you skyrim.
I played it, It rocked my young mind! It was awesome.
Dominions 3 - reasons already mentioned in this thread. i also really like the lore and mythology.
Legend of Zelda (NES) - the music, the open world, the secrets. it blew my mind as a kid.
Planescape: Torment - the story, the characters (shoutouts to O), the updating of the journal.
Half Life 1 & 2 - both were amazing roller coaster rides.
Diablo 1 & 2 - the music and sound effects from both of these games are etched into my brain. the game play was fast and tight (in D2, at least) which is something no other ARPG game has come close to matching IMO.
Harvest Moon 64 - yeah that's right. farming, dawg.
The Witcher 1 & 2 - great setting and writing. games that live up to the "your choices matter!" promise.
Mass Effect 1 & 2 - these games are more shooter and less RPG than a lot of people want. doesn't change the fact that i loved my time spent in that universe.
Rock & Roll Racing - best racing game ever. Rip looks lost out there!
Since the NES was my introduction to video games, I could name a lot of other games that hold a lot of nostalgic value... like RC Pro AM, Jackal, Ice Hockey (best multiplayer sports game ever), Punch Out!, Captain Skyhawk, Yo Noid, etc etc...
good times.
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