watsonwill, Myst wasn’t really an outstanding game. It had a beautiful look and clever puzzles and a charming plot, but it’s main claim to fame was that it was basically the first mass-market immersive gameworld. Options were limited, moves were circumscribed, and the solution is available, for the very, very observant, without having to go more than about 100 game-yards from where you start.
But it’s the granddaddy of them all, and gets honor for that. Nobody knows nostalgia like a computer gamer. (So sayeth a Commodore 64 Bard’s Tale alumnus).
Okay, my picks:
Best:
Zeus.
Pharaoh.
Caesar III.
I’m an Impressions whore.
Worst:
Sims. I found it incredibly boring. Why the hell do I want to be responsible for an idiot that I practically have to tell to go to the bathroom? Every six months or so (when I had a working computer), my hand would twitch in the direction of the Sims, because everyone is always raving over it. I figure I just misunderstood the game…if I try again, I might get it. Nope. Boooooorrrrrring! Maybe I’m just not enough of a busybody to like telling people what to do constantly.
watsonwill - the sims appeal (At least to me) came because not only was i playing it, but so were my three housemates at the time (one other guy, two girls). We set up a neighbourhood that essentially consisted of all of our mutual friends as close in character to real life ones as possible.
We then threw in a few other NPC characters such as william shatner, Mr T etc.
The “fun” came in watching that neighbourhood evolve - according to the girls it was more addictive than any soap opera.
I can see where you are coming from though - if it had just been my house i was controlling with nothing else going on then i would have put the game down within a week.
First of all, I’m hardly a young whippersnapper; I’ve been playing PC games since PCs didn’t have hard drives. My first PC had 640K of RAM, two 5.25" floppies, no hard drive, a CGA monitor and took so long to boot up that you could have written a novel describing the game before you actually got to play it. I deliberately tried to draw games from the entire history of PC gaming… “Empire” was first published in 1980, IIRC.
I have to admit that I thought real hard about that before leaving “Doom” off. It was a legitimately fantastic game, and, as you point out, was groundbreaking and changed the industry. But there’s not a lot of room in the Top Ten; I mean, which of those games would you leave off? You could argue In the end I gave the tiebreaker to game quality, figuring it was no insult to say Doom might have been the 16th best PC game ever.
Oh, and more honorable mentions to some games I forgot that others have mentioned: Monkey Island, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Deus Ex, and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. Also “Aces Over the Pacific.” Oh, and “Thief.” And “Fallout.”
And how did I forget F-19 Stealth Fighter and M1 Tank Platoon? Also, “Gunship.” Honorable mentions all around.
Civilisation II
Doom I (with mouselook)
Half-Life (before the alien levels)
Deus Ex
Baldur’s Gate
Pharaoh
Unreal Tournament
Red Alert 2 + Yuri’s Revenge (only without superweapons)
RickJay; no offense meant. I haven’t played most of the games on your list; I was never that much of a gamer and these days all I ever play is an hour or so of Unreal Tournament when I need to decompress. Doom just seemed too groundbreaking to ignore.
As an aside, is Empire the warfare game with boats and tanks, and the tanks looked like ironing appliances? If so, I played it and was addicted.
watsonwill - the sims appeal (At least to me) came because not only was i playing it, but so were my three housemates at the time (one other guy, two girls). We set up a neighbourhood that essentially consisted of all of our mutual friends as close in character to real life ones as possible.
We then threw in a few other NPC characters such as william shatner, Mr T etc.
The “fun” came in watching that neighbourhood evolve - according to the girls it was more addictive than any soap opera.
I can see where you are coming from though - if it had just been my house i was controlling with nothing else going on then i would have put the game down within a week.
I can’t believe that I forgot Europa Universalis I.
I have to say that I’m a bit baffled by the adoration for Civ2. Yeah, it was a great game, but it was merely a graphics and interface update to the first one for the most part as far as I can remember. Not original enough to qualify, imho.
garius, that was actually me that mentioned the Sims.
I didn’t include any of the Bard’s Tale or SSI D&D games because, while they were excellent for the computer capabilities of the time, they weren’t very good in an absolute sense. I didn’t realize this until I zapped my own nostalgia by buying the relatively recent re-releases of the Bards Tale, Ultima and Might&Magic series. From the standpoint of modern gameplay, they sucked silicon.
Ah, yes. Honorable mention to Europa Universalis. Also “Panzer General” and “Close Combat.”
cckerberos, you have a point about Civ II. The problem with sequels is figuring out which one to honor. In the case of Civilization, I picked II just because it was a better product overall, relative to its time, than Civ or Civ III. You could pick either of those, though, and defend it as the appropriate choice.
The 7th Guest
Riven
Planescape: Torment
No One Lives Forever
Sim City 2000(the one that really made the biggest advances forward)
Zork: Nemesis
Under a Killing Moon: A Tex Murphy Adventure
I’d say it was more than a graphical and interface update. The AI was improved considerably IMO, the ability to play scenarios was added (which took up most of my playing time) and the map size was IIRC increased.
Lots of games have been groundbreaking, Doom is just one of many - just seems to have been the ‘leap’ that caught your attention over all the others =)
If I had to pick /one/ game on groundbreaking issues, it would be System Shock - it did what Half Life and Deus Ex are lauded for doing - but it did it sooner and in some ways, better. Just didn’t get the press it deserved. Ditto Thief, the king of the great First Person Sneakers.
I haven’t gamed extensively, but I think Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers has to take the prize for plot and characterization. The rest of the series was pretty good too, but the first one was the best.
M.U.L.E. – Best. Game. Ever. Must be played with four humans for full effect.
Star Control 2 – A college friend and myself installed this and meant to play for a couple of hours before going out. Two solid days of gaming later, we finished the game. I think we only left the PC to use the bathroom.
Thief I/II – Atmosphere out the wazoo. Like garius, I really got sucked in. Plus there are a whole mess of fan missions that are fantastic, some as good as the originals.
Ultima VII/Serpent Isle – Fantastic interactivity with the game world. Bake bread if you want.
Ultima Underworld – I scoff at those of you calling Wolfenstein the original first-person perspective game.
Civilization – I never picked up the second version because I was scared to – the first one stole far too many hours of my life.
Privateer – “Feel Righteous Fire!”
Zork – first game that really kept me up at night.
Half-Life – you can’t argue with success. The fact that people are still modding a – what is it now five, six years old? – game is pretty good proof of quality.
Tie Fighter – because it’s fun to be a bad guy.
Worst: Let’s just say I bought Outpost and leave it at that.
Not the original first-person perspective game, the original first-person shooter. Or, if you prefer, the first Doom/Quake-genre game, although that’s kind of circular logic. While Ultima Underworld was indeed a first-person game, it wasn’t in the same genre as Doom or Quake.
