The best games ever.

[whathuh]

Now we all know that games are constantly getting better, (except for blizzard which seems to be years behind in the graphics department: take a look at SC: Ghost and the new Unreal Tournament) but there are some games that just seemed to stand out as absolutely superb for when they were made. Please note, I'm mainly talking about PC games here, but feel free to include mario if you want.

I personally know of only a few, but they were awesome in their time and in some cases are still awesome.

Adventure
Duke Nukum
Doom
Starcraft
Wing Commander
Diablo

Personally, I have a hard time choosing between them all, but Doom was immensely fun and even though it was a remake of Wolfenstien, it was incredibly unique with the various weapons (BFG comes to mind) and true 3d levels (there were slanted walls, stairs, multiple levels, flying creatures). Finally, it revolutionized multiplayer ability, but during the time when 28.8 modems were BLAZING, and people only had 1 phone line, multiplayer didn't see much action from my house.

Duke Nukum was a crazy game that still works on windows xp as far as I know. It even has sound through the built in speaker on computers. I think it was the first game I ever really got into, but I didn't ever beat it until a few years ago.

Adventure, aka. Colossal Cave, came out 10 years before I was born, but my parents seemed to love it. It was one of the first text based games, and was a crazy turn based game full of small rooms. You could only carry one item at a time, and you sometimes needed multiple items.

Wing Commander had Hobbes. How cool was that? It had a crazy storyline with a tiger type race and other aliens. You also got different ships that shot gigantic missiles of different types. My gosh, my 5 year old mind could only take so much. They did end up making a movie about it though...

Finally, the newest game of the bunch, Starcraft. Everyone here better know it.
The most balanced game I've ever played that didn't involve the exact same units on different races. Warcraft would have gotten this title, but orcs were exactly the same as humans with different spells on a few units and different animations/names.

Diablo. Everything random, 16 levels, kill a guy with "Lord" and "Terror" in his name. Enough said.


Any I missed that were awesome games (or new ones that deserve to be here because they rock so much?)

[Zippyy]

My list of favorite games:
Closest to my heart - Final Fantasy VII (my only friend in middle schoolB))
Diablo
Morrowind
Half-Life 1 & 2
Doom
Tekken 2, 3, and 5
Starcraft
World of Warcraft
Everquest (early on)
Katamari Damacy
Chip's Challenge! (just kidding)
Pong
Magic: The Gathering (does that count?)
Total Annihilation
Descent 1 & 2
Myst et al
Threshold (www.thresholdrpg.com)
Counter-Strike
Unreal Tournament et al
Sim City (original)
The Sims 2 (just because of the face manipulator)
Soon: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion!

I'm sure I've forgotten a bunch, and some fantastic games are excluded, of course, simply because I haven't played them!

[gekko]

Myth: The Fallen Lords, and Myth II: Soulblighter. Myth III is also worth picking up (all three games are availabe cheap if you can still find them), but doesn't have nearly the lure of the first two.

Tough to get into, due mostly to the very different camera angle. For those who haven't played them, Myth looks at first glance like a warcraft style game, but with several major differences. First and foremost, you can never construct buildings or train new units - you use what you've got and that's it. Secondly, combat is far more realistic than warcraft - archers miss and can hit your own units if you're not careful; units struck must 'recover' before being able to strike back; explosions hurt your own troops as well as the enemy; units who have survived several levels and picked up a few kills become faster and more accurate. Finally, while the first two games use 2 D sprites for the units, the environment is fully 3D and the camera can orbit, turn and zoom freely.

The thing that really proves to me how amazing this game is has always been the community. Nearly a decade after Bungie stopped supporting the series, there have been several major patches - giving the game support for modern graphics cards and operating systems, for example, as well as significant improvemnts to gameplay and bugfixes. New maps are released constantly by the community, and several dedicated, free servers exist - again, long after the official Bungie servers were shut down.

The single player missions are challenging, varried and fun; the multiplayer experience is even better. Multiplayer games can range from Body Count (most damage wins) to Territories (control the most of a number of flags scattered throughout the map after time expires) to Hunting (kill as much wildlife as possible - including some maps featuring exploding deer).

Playmyth.net is the site for the largest of the multiplayer servers, and has links to download the updates to all three games. I highly recomend checking it out if you can find the games.

gekko

[[wcip]Angel]

Certainly, Deus Ex comes rather quickly to mind. There was not a single thing wrong with that game. It was a perfect blend of FPS, Stealth'em up, RPG and adventure. The setting and mood was equally dismal and cool. The characters and their development were intriguing and unpredictable. The freedom of choice was revolutionary at the time, and played a huge role in the development of that genre of games.


Morrowind, an epic role playing game which furthered the notion of 'freedom' to do whatever you wanted. A vast world, with an endless number of things to do in any order possible. Character-building, exploration, questing, top notch graphics and atmosphere, not to mention the music. Morrowind had it all!


Final Fantasy (especially VII and VIII). - the modern novel of games. Plot, characters, storyline were central to these games. An incredibly immersive storyline coupled with charismatic and well-developed characters, loveable villains and probably the best soundtrack in gaming history made these games some of the best experiences I've ever had the pleasure to enjoy.


Metal Gear Solid (1998). The first game to 'break the fourth dimension' from Psycho Mantis' "reading of your mind" to the nanomachines stimulating the muscles in your arm by holding a vibrating PS2-controller close to your arm. Although very cool, this was nothing compared to the characters of the game. Probably the most lovable, sympathetic and multi-dimensional bunch of baddies ever to grace a playstation-game. Taking into the consideration the flawed, anti-social characterisation of the protagonist, the game actually made you cheer for the people you were killing; a strange notion for a game indeed! It spurred the "what the hell am I doing? I'm killing one of the good guys??!"-feeling over and over again and actually made you consider your actions. God I love gray areas, the blurred shade between good and evil! MGS perfected this!


Resident Evil, a fabulous, horribly-acted, even more horribly-written horror game from 1996. This revolutionary game of survival-horror showed the world that games weren't just for kids. Although beloved by people of all ages, this game - targeted at adults - contained lots of lovely monstrosities, weapons, blood, scary moments and some loveable characters.


Warning! This game contains scenes of explicit violence and gore! <-- When reading this, you knew you were in for a real treat!

There are more games to mention such as the Silent Hill-series (the most terrifying games I've played), Star Craft (the RTS with the most involving plot out there), Diablo, Hidden & Dangerous (still the best WW2-simulator out there!) the original Tomb Raider, Day of the tentacle, God of War, Interstate 76, Mafia, Half life 1 & 2, the Mechwarrior-series, but descriptions of these would fall flat of their actual quality, as I'm beginning to rant aimlessly :)

It's extremely difficult to come up with the best game of all time. I'm certainly torn between Deus Ex and Final Fantasy VII. Of recent games, I'd be tempted to include Resident Evil 4 in the discussion as well.

edit: Ooo! Found this interesting piece of Deus Ex-trivia on Wikipedia:

Deus Ex and 9/11

The game attracted attention after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York. The World Trade Center towers are absent from the New York skyline in the game. This was to cut down on memory requirements for the first map, Liberty Island. The reason that the developers gave, if anyone asked, was that they had been destroyed by terrorists. This was over a year before the real attacks occurred, and the "war on terror" was declared.

[Yrrek]

Pong.

[[wcip]Angel]

Hmm! I immediately thought of this:



But that's "Pang". Still, a great co-op game though ;)

[Nystul]

This thread is worthless without Angband. :P

Also somewhat shocking that Baldur's Gate hasn't been mentioned yet.

And Quake deserves mention as it made significant leaps beyond Doom.

And thumbs up to many of the games mentioned already, including Deus Ex and of course Diablo.

[ShadowHM]

Crokinole

There are other games besides computer ones, yanno.

[Guest]

Close Combat 3
X-Com 1
Diablo 2
HomeWorld Cataclysm(multiplayer)

[Occhidiangela]

Golf. But only if you are walking. Carrying your own clubs is best, pull cart is fine, and a caddy now and again is a wonderful bit of icing on that cake.

Occhi

[Bolty]

My experience with gaming is limited to PC games, since I've never owned a console. So consider this my list of the Greatest PC Games of All Time That If You Haven't Played, I Have No Respect For You, Because I am a Loser (in no particular order). Each of these games wound up completely engrossing me at the time I played them.

I excluded games that, if I were to play them now with modern PCs, would not engross me. Example? Dune II - a fabulous game at the time, the first real RTS for the PC, but if you went back to play it now you'd be frustrated by its clunky UI and horrifically stupid AI (I know this, because I tried). This keeps the list short and sweet - it's got to be good TODAY, not just in years past when it might have been innovative at the time. This really cuts down on the size of the list. Doom was incredibly awesome, but I loaded it up on my PC a few months back and practically laughed at it, it seemed so lame. Also, I tried to avoid the "rose-colored glasses" effect, where games you play as a kid seem so much better than they would now. So, any of these games on the list could be played today by anyone and be very enjoyable if they could ignore somewhat out-of-date graphics engines.

Star Control II - possibly the greatest of all time, a genre-buster and still playable today due to the fan-based total conversion at http://sc2.sourceforge.net. Combination RPG, action, adventure, exploration, diplomacy, etc, one of the most cross-genre games I've ever seen. Almost entire game written by just two guys (this was 1992, after all). I still have my giant starmap that came with the box. :)
Deus Ex - best FPS ever, yep, even beating Half-Life. Why did its sequel have to suck? Oh yeah, they designed it for CONSOLES. Idiots. Blargh!
Day of the Tentacle - One of the funniest games ever. Some lines from the game are just classic. "This looks like that Woodstock place Mom and Dad are always talking about." "Mmm, the green fluorescent light makes the beef jerky look especially attractive!" "So, want another cigar?" "You can't be taken seriously by the other mad scientists of the world unless you're spewing toxic waste from your home!"
Grim Fandango - Unique world, great characters. "Can you make me a baloon of Robert Frost?"
Planescape Torment - best storyline in a game, ever. "Don't trust the skull."
Diablo - ...nuff said?
World of Warcraft - a year and a half so far and I haven't played much else.
Civilization II - improved on the original, almost perfect.
Sacrifice - the Game Nobody Played - Shiny was bought by EA and dismantled before the expansion pack could be released. I don't know if you can even buy this anymore. Combination RTS/FPS game, it was different, original, scored very highly by critics - and didn't sell.
Tie Fighter - who doesn't like being a wingman of the Dark Lord of the Sith? A huge improvement over its predecessor, X-Wing, and the gold-standard of space sims for years after.

-Bolty

[Pesmerga]

My list:

Final Fantasy Tactics, VII, and IX. Not to mention III (or VI if you are a purist)
Suikoden I and II (III and IV aren't bad, but I and II were great)
Secret of Evermore

Those are the games I recommend to anyone, and considering I've never played a whole lot in the PC realm, I don't have much to offer there. Our 3 person games of Civ III in college were a lot of fun though....

[Nystul]

Crokinole&nbsp; &nbsp;

There are other games besides computer ones, yanno.
[right][snapback]89651[/snapback][/right]

Yeah, we know! Is Crokinole for the Nintendo, or the Playstation? :P

[Mithrandir]

Planescape: Torment
Chrono Trigger

Honorable Mentions: Baldur's Gate with Tales of the Sword Coast and Grand Theft Auto 3.

I spent a lot of time playing Sim City, Diablo, and StarCraft in past years, but PS:T and CT were just so far above any other game that I have ever played that it's difficult to put anything else on their level. Baldur's Gate pretty much singlehandedly resparked my interest in PC gaming after Doom and Wolfenstein had grown stale. It's kinda weird, now that I think about it, that it's been 12 years since Doom and 7 since BG. I was 8 or 9 the last time I played Doom and I *still* remember the level layouts with exceptional clarity. Heh. The things you remember, eh?

I've played Dark Age of Camelot on and off for 4 years now, but I don't know... there's just something about a MMOG that doesn't seem to lend itself to being on a "best games ever" list to me for some reason.

Neverwinter Nights deserves to be mentioned - I still play this game every now and then because the support from Bioware and content released by the community has been excellent. I want to eventually buckle down and finish off *all* of the great fan-created content out there eventually. Hopefully before NWN2 is released :) It's mostly the community that keeps this game alive for me though, since the Bioware campaigns weren't anything ridiculously awesome (especially the original campaign).

I'm kinda embarassed to admit it, but I only played the Deux Ex demo and played only a smidgen of FF7.

[Doc]

Marathon.

[Swiss Mercenary]

Deus Ex - best FPS ever, yep, even beating Half-Life.&nbsp; Why did its sequel have to suck?&nbsp; Oh yeah, they designed it for CONSOLES.&nbsp; Idiots.&nbsp; Blargh!

That's exactly my sentiment on the matter.

Amasingly enough, Dues Ex, the game that (made a great leap) in building up Warren Spector's fame in the industry to a near-mythical level managed to be a great game in spite of what he thought a good game should be.

The man stated flat out and clear after DE:IW that he wanted to design games for consoles. :wacko:

Sacrifice - the Game Nobody Played - Shiny was bought by EA and dismantled before the expansion pack could be released.&nbsp; I don't know if you can even buy this anymore.&nbsp; Combination RTS/FPS game, it was different, original, scored very highly by critics - and didn't sell.

I wouldn't have listed that among my best ever, but boy, did I enjoy it. Beautiful piece of work. And fie on the ignorant masses.

[oldmandennis]

System Shock 2, a FPS/RPG/Horror hybrid. It often comes up on "underrated games" lists. It is a predecessor to Deus Ex. Supposedly "BioShock" is in the works.

/sign for Star Control 2. Also has a fun PVP game, with two people hunched over one keyboard old school style.

Didn't notice any galactic civilization sims, or "space operas" I've sometimes heard them called (I'd be interested to know the origins of the phrase). Master of Orion is my pick. A simple interface and economic system lets you get right to what you want: exploring and racing colonyships to the good planets. For the sequal, they grafted the dopy Civ economic system onto it, and ruined everything.

Not really sure about Sacrifice. I got it late. IMHO, most people can't multitask enough to play a FPS and a RTS at the same time. If you got in a good multiplayer game with voice chat, I can see it being awesome! Many bonus points for thinking outside the box. Here's hoping they put a commander mode into one of the WoW BG's at somepoint.

[Swiss Mercenary]

Ah, yes. My list. Of course.

In no particular order.

Deus Ex - for all the reasons that have been stated above, and more.

It's funny that Bolty brought up Half-Life, as when I stopped to think about it, I can't find a single thing (Bunnyhopping bugs in multiplayer aside) wrong with the game. Everything's great.

Deus Ex managed to go the extra mile, above 'great'.

"I was never properly trained in its operation" always brings a smile to my face.



Thief 2 - And no matter what Angel says, I'm sticking to my guns. Fire arrows. Same difference.

Thief. Thief, Thief, Thief. What can I say?

Unique gameplay. Well, unique before everyone and their brother jumped on the stealth bandwagon. Didn't sell too badly, either. Didn't make a difference either way, with Eidos canning Looking Glass Studios, most probably to cut losses after the miserable failure (And cash syphon) that was Daikatana.

It's just... Hard for me to grasp what made the game so great for me. The difficulty played a role. The story was decent. The atmosphere... Was amazing. The City really felt like a real place, and travel by the rooftops to Angelwatch tower was by far my favourite experience in the game.



And don't ask me about the treebeasts. Just... Don't. :mellow:

It was probably the NPCs. Guards complaining about needing new boots. Mechanists humming along their patrol routes. Hammerite haunts stalking the crypts...

And, of course, in this day and age, the game still looks allright. Just... Allright.

Sid Meir's Alpha Centauri

I never really got into Civ 2, or Civ 3, but SMAC is everything I wanted from a turn-based strategy game, and a bit more.



My only woe from it is the overreliance on formers and crawlers, but hey, same could be said for Starcraft peons.

Starcraft

If I really have to explain what makes Starcraft great to anyone here... No, I don't. Good. Very good. No further comments necessary.

Warcraft 3 just can't compete with it.

Baldur's Gate 2

I'm sorry to say that I haven't played PS:T, or BG:ToSC. But in regards to BG 2, I simply can't complain about the little bugs in it. I just can't. It, in its entirety, is just great.

Angband and associated variants

99 dungeon levels. Chain-summoning demons, ridicilously powerful monsters, chain-summoning demons, brutal traps, and did I mention the chain-summoning demons?

I've mainly been playing http://www.T-O-M-E.net . Truly an excellent game.

Diablo

Forget Diablo 2, forget the Game That Plays Itself (Dungeon Siege), if you want a non-ASCII dungeon crawl... Diablo. But, hey, everyone here already knows that, no?

Chrono Trigger

I just can't get away with not listing it. And I'm sure that no justification is necessary.

Edit: Ah, hell, I knew I forgot something

System Shock 2

A pox upon Deebye, and his account of the game... Which prompted me to play it.

May you be consumed by rumblers, slowly.

Runner-up:

Guild Wars

I can't in all honesty put GW on the list, because I feel that it needs a bit more time to mature. Whatever the case, I'm quite satisfied with the current stae of the game, just like I was fairly satsifed with its state at release.

[nobbie]

- Monkey Island 1 + 2
- Maniac Mansion 1 + 2
- Diablo 1 + 2

[Archon_Wing]

Sim City 2000

Well, I played this game when I was 10, and it was definitely the best thing ever at the time. I mean, it was simple, but it was possible to create an entire world, or at least a city and naming roads and buildings at your whim. A (benolvlent) dictator's fantasy.
The other games that followed built onto it, and I still play 4, although not nearly with as much enthusasim.

Final Fantasy VII
1 of the 2 Final Fantasy games that I ever played a chunk out of, it was simply a load of fun, mostly because of general coolness. The characters were intresting even though they fit into the standard RPG sterotypes. We had Cloud the guy with an oversized sword, Tifa with oversized pixelated (never mind) :P, the ill fated flower girl, an oversized cat-doll thing (WTF?), a big dude with an oversized gun, an abusive cussing piliot a dog, a vampire, a ninja, and a villian with an equally oversized sword as the hero. Freud would have a nice day with this oversized objects in this game, that sick bastard. For me, the characters were distinct enough and the plot was managable. The ending was a letdown, though. One of the few RPGs where I actualy reached the maximum levels.

Final Fantasty VIII

Haha, just kidding. :P Actualy I have a soft spot for this game, even though it's not as great as its predecessors. Sure the plot makes no sense, the two leads are hateful, and the main villian seems like something they threw in in the last five minutes of production but it did have some cool cut scenes. The guardian forces were intresting, and probaly the highlight of the game.

Diablo
I only played a little bit of single player, but damn this game sure left its mark. The dead guy on the first floor, and that butcher chasing you while you attempt to "run "away (at the pace of a snail) was surely something to remember. The music was something its sequal couldn't do that well.

Super Smash Brothers
Beating your opposition up in a comedic fashion always rules. The random weapons are quite entertaining, especialy the almighty fan.

Mega Man x, x2
The first Mega man entries in the SNES world were a huge leap in the series. The biggest diffrence was probaly the graphics, but there was also some treasure hunting mixed with the action goodness of the original megaman series. I've always have had a soft spot for the charged up blast. Plus, the X plotline is the most developed of all the Mega Man series. It gave the world more of a darker, more mature tone. As I played these games while I was growing up, the change seemed apporiate. Oh yea, and Zero. zzzzzzzzzzzz

Starcraft
I still play this game regularly, and enjoy it because the system requirements allow it to be played almost anywhere. After seven years of play, people are still taking the game to an unbelievably high level, and it can be fun trying to do something similar. The game is noted for its incredible sense of balance. It's not perfectly balanced and it took a number of patches to get it right, but it serves as a monument to when Blizzard actualy gets its #$%& together. Starcraft has generally been free of gamebreaking bugs and cheats until lately. Blizzard however, has acted unusually quickly in fixing these things. Besides having 3 distinct races, Starcraft forces you to adopt diffrent strategies to adapt to your opponenet while trying to macro or "mass" an army. Balancing the two is generally a great challenge and why I still play this game-- Blizzard has continued to maintain an excellent online service where you can easily find a decent game at most times of day. ;o