favorite pc game?

[swampfox]

Really enjoying Sanctum right now. Fun to go back and forth between Tower Defense and FPS.

[TurtlePerson2]

Can you compare Sanctum and Orcs Must Die for me? I just finished playing Orcs Must Die and I rather liked it. Sanctum looks like a similar concept, so I'm wondering if it's as fun.

[swampfox]

Can you compare Sanctum and Orcs Must Die for me? I just finished playing Orcs Must Die and I rather liked it. Sanctum looks like a similar concept, so I'm wondering if it's as fun.

Sorry, haven't played Orcs Must Die. Recommend it? How about multiplayer, and for weak computers? (I'm playing Sanctum on my gaming desktop, but also with a friend using an hp dm1z.) I hope someone has played both.

[TurtlePerson2]

Orcs Must Die is single-player only. It's a fun game and I would recommend it, but I would recommend that if you want to buy it you wait until the next Steam sale. I got it for $3.74 during the Thanksgiving sale.

The minimum GPU requirement is a GeForce 6800, so use that to judge whether the laptop can handle it.

It also has a free demo you could try out on Steam.

[PenGun]

Stalker the best video game ever. SOC CS and COP rule all the others.

Been playing since Doom. I have over 1000 Doom and Doom2 wads. I have very many games including all of Half Life, a decent set of games but like so many western games about being a hero. Stalker is designed to humiliate you.

Playing Skyrim now after being disappointed with Rage. Pretty but no soul at all. Skyrim is fun. I am not too used to RPGs and playing a Mage is new and different for sure.

[RealityChk]

MW3 -- Game
Flight Sim X -- Simulation

[LoneWolf15]

Recent history - Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3 (and NV, though not as much), Borderlands, Torchlight

All time favorites (in no particular order):

Half-Life/Half-Life 2
Descent Freespace/Freespace 2 (best spaceflight combat sim ever)
Wing Commander franchise (all of them)
LucasArts X-Wing/Tie Fighter franchise
Warcraft/Diablo franchise (I can still play Warcraft 2 and enjoy it)
Crimson Skies
GLQuake (specifically multiplayer, with original Voodoo I card)
Duke Nukem 3D (specifically multiplayer)
Wolfenstein 3D

Honorable mentions:
Unreal Tournament and UT3,
Quake 2 (specifically multiplayer, with runes)
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Doom franchise

[pedro]

Diablo II: LOD.

[kamikaziechameleon]

I've been playing a few games recently and I hadn't been really impressed by any title of late... then came the witcher 2. A game so broken on fundamental levels that it has entire quest lines blocked out if you don't buy an item from a character you only meet once early in the game before ever adventuring...

AND YET I LOVE IT! The game has such a immersive and unique portrayal of classic fantasy with amazing art design and spectacular technology. My spine tingles when wading into the forest at dawn to hunt something. Watching spider like monsters silently descend down a tree into the fog in the distance, laying traps and preparing for battle as it approaches. Oh the game looks good but better looking games have struggled to accomplish such a sense of wonder in me with such confined intimate spaces. The forest is dense and yet feels vast despite not being so. The characters are all believable and the narrative is ripe with great dialogue and stunning plot twists. It doesn't feel like a game that is playing you(COD, Dragon Age 2) but rather one your are experiencing as you adventure onward. I spent hours fapping about learning the intricacies of a deep and well realized combat system that rewards preparation like no game before it. You want to literally harvest all as you progress for making bombs, traps, potions, and crafting weapons and upgrades. If I had one complaint its that I never feel like I'm leveling adequately and that basic combat maneuvers are part of your skill tree meaning you waste a precious level unlocking blocking

Haven't finished it but with the day and a half of play time already invested I would place the wicher 2 as the best game I've played this year, certainly inspires more in me than any other game.

best game of all time still rests on the shoulders of half-life, then half-life2.

[Bensam123]

Tribes 2
Tribes 1
Dawn of War
RavenShield
Battlefield 2
Rise of Legends

[monts]

The game that I enjoyed playing the most was total annihilation. Spend way too much time on it back in the day.

[MidnightFrost1701]

In no particular order within each tier:

Top tier:
--Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
--Team Fortress 2
--Left 4 Dead 2
--Killing Floor

Second tier:
--Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City
--The Sims 2
--Knights of the Old Republic 1/2
--RollerCoaster Tycoon
--Team Fortress Classic
--Unreal Tournament GOTY Edition
--Left 4 Dead
--Half-life 2
--Portal 1/2

Third tier:
--Star Wars Battlefront 2
--Crysis
--Battlefield: Bad Company 2
--Bioshock
--Batman: Arkham Asylum
--Half-life
--Unreal Tournament 2004
--The Sims 3
--Star Wars: The Old Republic (could move either direction; I'm only level 19 w/my first character)

[Arclight]

FPS
Single player : Quake 2 and 4, Half-Life 2 (Where's my Ep3 Gabe? Where is it?)
Multi player: Counter-Strike 1.6 and Source, Battlefield 2142, Battlefield 3

Strategy:
Stracraft Brood War and Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty both single player and multi player

Edit:

You meant Strategy, not RPG.

Yup, thanks and edited.

[khands]

FPS
Single player : Quake 2 and 4
Multi player: Counter-Strike 1.6 and Source

RPG:
Stracraft Brood War both single player and multi player

You meant Strategy, not RPG.

Personally it's really hard to pick, so I'll just list a few favorites in no particular order.

Deus Ex
Half-Life
LOOM
Monkey Island
Kings Quest VIII (Shocker I know!)
Police Quest 1-3
Mechwarrior 2
All the Descent games and Freespace 1&2
Sim City 2000
Civilization II and IV
Neverwinter Nights
Baldurs Gate & Baldurs Gate 2
Wolfenstein 3D,
DooM and DooM 2,
Quake 2 and Q3A,
Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and Unreal Tournament 2004
Planetside
Sword of the Stars
Galactic Civilization II
Red Alert
Alpha Centauri
WarCraft III
StarCraft, Brood War, and StarCraft 2
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Skyrim
Savage

And I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.

[Jambe]

Nice taste in games here. I don't have a specific genre preference, really. Games already-mentioned I especially like:

D2 LoD: I just can't stop the clicking once I start. I know it's silly but I just can't stop. I went back to it some months ago and it's still just as addictive.
AoE II: what a tight, ensnaring game. Microsoft's disbanding of Ensemble was unforgivable!
UT GOTY: pure fragfests have never been as fun for me as they were when this game was popular. *sigh*
MechWarrior 2: I think Mercs was the pinnacle of the MechWarrior series. I so hope MechWarrior Online is good!

Obviously Valve are sovereign devs and I like the HL, Portal, and L4D series. TF2 is well-made and Valve's approach to it has been interesting, but I don't play it much. DOTA 2 looks to be good.

I enjoy convoluted strategy games, too, and space-trading games like Sword of the Stars. So pretty much all of Paradox's strategy stuff, the Civilization series (and several of the Civ IV mods which are essentially standalone games in their own right), and some weirder stuff like the pbem Solium Infernum or the slow-paced multiplayer browser-based Neptune's Pride. I also enjoy the more tactics-oriented or "Real-Time Strategy" games, and my first love in that genre was Total Annihilation. I was never that big into Starcraft but I could see it was a well-made game, and SCII is great fun if you're not getting stomped by some click-o-matic deity in MP. Company of Heroes, World in Conflict and Dawn of War 2 stick out in my mind as other fun RTS games.

I played and really enjoyed EVE Online for some time but I haven't been subbed since... 2009? Or maybe 2010. Guild Wars was fun and GW2 excites me. I played other MMOs over the years (WoW, Vanguard, World of Tanks, and a bunch of others that don't jump to mind) but they all sorta bored me. Perpetuum looks like it might be fun (EVE Online but with mechs instead of starships) but I haven't played it yet.

/edit: Terraria. The most fun I've ever wrung out of a game has been from this $10 title (which regularly goes to $2.50 on sale, or $1.87 per in the 4-pack). It's made by really nice indie devs who are active on their forums and it has a friendly and helpful official forum community. It's a solid little 2D sprite-based mining/fighting/building game, like Minecraft but with more focus on combat and item variety. Coop MP is great fun and the PVP can be a hilariously chaotic good time. It's Steam-only.

Oh and sneaky-stealthy games — I enjoyed the Thief series (and the Dark Mod Project) and the Hitman games.

[Jambe]

Monday Night Combat

That's a tight little game, innit? I'm curious to see what Super Monday Night Combat is like. I guess the beta's in progress atm.

[BlackStar]

There are many good PC games out there, but only a few manage to become 'great' games. What separates a great game from a good game? To me, it's the 'feeling'. Great games manage to create an atmosphere that stimulates the imagination and sucks you right in.

My all-time favourite games (subjectively) display this quality.

1. X-COM
2. Vampire the Masquarade: Bloodlines
3. Planescape: Torment

A close call between X-COM, VTMB and Planescape: Torment for the most awesome PC game ever. It depends on your favorite genre I guess (strategy, rpg, strategy/rpg).

These are three very different games that manage to distill this 'atmosphere' into a pure form. None is perfect gameplay-wise (what game is?) but the atmosphere is so gripping that it simply doesn't matter. When you play these games, everything else fades in the background - these are games you experience, not games that you play.

4. Starcraft
5. Diablo

These games take a different approach: very solid designs that serve the gameplay, rather than vice versa. Note that the 'feeling', the atmosphere, is still there: remember how you felt when you encountered your very first zergling or when you entered the cathedral for the first time. Curiosity, foreboding, horror, reaction, action! These first encounters are the spark that explodes into frantic action - the atmosphere is always there, stimulating the imagination, but it surrenders the limelight to the gameplay.

6. Mass Effect
7. Half Life

Both games are an achievement in worldbuilding. The backstory, character design and world design create a feeling of wonder that's unique and unprecedented - and each game does this in a different way: Half Life takes a minimalist approach; Mass Effect a pluralist.

Half Life explains very little to the player: how does the living alien fortress in HL2 work? Why does it work this way? What do the aliens want? Who is the g-man? A thousand other questions with answers the player can only guess. It makes sense: the game's hero doesn't know, so how could the player know? And it works, too! The whole package is very compelling.

Mass Effect explains everything. How does FTL travel work? How do your weapons work? Your shields? Your ship's shields? The economy? How is the world governed? Who calls the shots? What about the multi-faceted tensions between factions? Everything, and I mean *everything* is explained in-game. Each game may be 10-15 hours long, but the world is so detailed and so compelling, that it doesn't matter - you can lose yourself in the lore.

So which of the two approaches is better? This is mostly a personal preference, however I do feel that Mass Effect has unseated Half Life, not for gameplay reasons, but because Valve neglected the Half Life franchise to the point of no return. Half Life 2 was released back in 2004 with maybe 20 hours of gameplay and the expansions game maybe another 20 hours of total gameplay. But now it's 2012, and there's no Half Life 3 in sight and no resolution to the story in sight - all I can say at this point is a big 'meh'. Even if HL3 was released now, would you trust Valve to provide a compelling conclusion to the story? I'd be very sceptical.

[Kevin]

I am a huge fan of “Age of Empires 2” and “Max Payne” really loves playing it because of the visual graphic in it. Really makes to feel the game.

[maiden4life]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky
Mass Effect 2

[Jambe]

7. Amnesia

oooo, that's a good game. It's neat that such a tiny five-person studio made it. All the subtle scratching, moaning, dripping, breathing noises that they came up with — by far the most unsettling stuff I've ever encountered in a game. The only game that's ever made me leave the computer to turn the lights on. I really like that there's no combat — it really heightens your desperation when you encounter something in the distance. And I like that it's not cheap "things popping out of nowhere" halloween haunted-house frights.

“Max Payne” really loves playing it because of the visual graphic in it. Really makes to feel the game.

The tongue-in-cheek noir they built in those first two games was great, as was the way the comic cut in and out to advance the narrative. I'm worried about Max Payne 3, given that it's not a Remedy Entertainment thing and they've taken him out of grungy NY and into Brazil (???). The trailers look nice but...

[squeeb]

I love Battlefield 3...but been taking a break since I hit Colonel. Picked up SWTOR and its all I've been playing for 5 weeks now. Hooked!