Convince me to buy your favorite computer game...

Cafe Society
1

I’m looking for something to immerse myself in. Haven’t really bought a computer game in a few years, but I just built my brand-new machine so am eager to get a game.

I’m willing to consider anything. FPS, strategy, multiplayer/MMORPG, sports, whatever. So rather than tell you what I like or liked in the past, I’m throwing it out there for all you gaming Dopers.

Use your marketing skills and persuasive ability, and convince me why I should try your game.

Please. I’m begging you. I have looked through many game review sites, and am now totally indecisive about what to blow money on. Help.

*Note that my new machine can handle any game.

2

Unreal Tournament 2004.

Orgasmic. Massive landscapes. The Onslaught mode is reason enough to play the game. Driving along in the tank, with the view zoomed into the distance, hearing your sabot (or whatever it’s called) hit your target 2 seconds after you fired it, with that distant thud of destruction. That is fun.

It’s not always about blowing eachother up, there’s a lot of oportunities to outwit your oponent, such as tricking him into getting out of his tank, stealing the tank, and blowing him to bits with it.

3

Civilisation 3.

Turn based, multi-player, strategy game with several completely different ways to win.
Straightforward interface and on-line reference manual.

Takes a while to get good, but there are many levels of difficulty, including a tutorial.

You have to balance keeping your civilisation secure (military), content (cultural), knowledgeable (science) while exploring and negotiating with other civilisations.

A game takes 10-40 hours to finish, but it’s easy to save and pick up the thread later.

Have a look at www.civfanatics.com to see the depth of interest this game inspires.

4

If you liked the classic FPS Doom from years back, then there’s a game that perfectly captures the frenetic, massive, adrenaline soaked battles of that landmark game.

No, it’s not Doom 3. It’s Painkiller. I won’t go into the details of the plot, not because I don’t want to spoil it, but because it simply does not matter. Just picture you, armed with a pneumatic stake launcher, against hordes of screaming demons thirsting for your blood. The action is intense, gory, highly kinetic, and uber-violent. Can’t recommend it enough.

For a more realistic, story-driven FPS, check out Far Cry. The engine powering this game is simply amazing. The levels are huge. How huge? The range and accuracy on an M-16 in this game are as realistic as I’ve ever seen. You can pick guys off from over a thousand meters away. And it’s got the most realistic jungle levels I’ve ever seen. None of this “wall painted like vegetation” crap, each plant in individually rendered, and provides your character with cover from the prying eyes of your enemies. Nuthin’ like lying in wait in the long grass, sniper rifle at hand, waiting for just the right shot to take out that unsuspecting guard in the watch-tower a quarter mile away.

5

I second glee’s Civ III. I’m finally getting a new computer in a couple weeks and one of the things I look forward to the most is being able to play it again.

Other than that, I’unno. I’m not a gamer but that game’s so fun that I can’t help but play it.

6

I can recommend a lot of games… but it really depends on what you like.

If you want deeply immersive single-player RPG, *Morrowind is fing awesome.

If you want party-based RPG that support multiplayer and uses the 3rd Ed. D&D rules, then Neverwinter Nights is for you.

If you want to blow away some monsters with big guns, then Far Cry is the ticket.

But if you want to know what I’m obsessed with right now… it’s City of Heroes.
You can come play with some fellow Dopers – there’s a batch of us on the Virtue server, and groups on at least two others that I know of.

It’s a great way to play out all of those childhood (and teen, and adulthood) fantasies of becoming a superhero. It’s a massively multiplayer game, so lots of interaction if you want it, and it’s sort of an RPG, so there’s increases in your character’s abilities (you get new superpowers and your existing powers get better over time). Unlike most MMO games, though, there is no crafting, very little time spent getting from one place to another, and generally little downtime.

Plus, there’s a system that lets players of different levels play together (sidekicking the lower-level one up or “exemplaring” the higher-level player down to the lower level).

Swing on by http://sdmb.culex.us to get a look at the memberlist, message board and picture gallery.

7

Although it won’t give your computer a stress test, I’d recommend my favorite computer game of all time for its immersive qualities: Planetfall. :smiley:

8

Halo.

IF you can organize multiplayer games with opponents of similar skill, either online or with friends. The single-player game is okay, but (and I am not really a gamer) multiplayer HALO is the only game that has ever seen me play until dawn.

9

If you don’t mind going back in time a bit…

System Shock 2. It STILL scares me, even after having played through it four or five times. Not the prettiest, but I can’t think of a more immersive PC game.

10

Cool, thanks for the suggestions. Some of these I’d started to consider. I took a long look at Civ III, and may still go in that direction. As far as FPS, I downloaded the demos for Painkiller and Far Cry; Painkiller seemed fine, very Doom-ish, but almost too … simplistic. Just straightforward gore and killing, which is fine in and of itself. Far Cry, unfortunately, has problems with the nVidia GeForce cards - at least the 6800 series. Kept crashing. I guess they probably have a patch for the game, but probably not the demo, but regardless I can’t really check it out.

I’ll take a look at the RPGs, something like that would be interesting, especially if it carries me back to my old Wizardry days.

As far as MMORPGs, I may take a look at EQ2 - but the one I’m really waiting for is Imperator. But it’s more than a year out.

Keep 'em coming, please.

11

Nethack. :smiley:

Let me tell you why:

It’s free.
It’s the most complex as far as function goes RPG I’ve ever played.
Sadly, it now takes 2 3.5 inch disks to hold the whole thing. That’s a fairly recent development.
It’s a labor of love, and the people who make the game are constantly updating it with new content (like there wasn’t enough already!).

Graphics? Er…ASCII. We’re talking 16 colors, the walls are _ and |, you are a happy little @, your dog is a d if you have one, your cat is an f. And yet despite the absolute lack of bells and whistles, it quickly becomes astonishingly immersive to the point that the little yellow c fills me with dread.

Take for example the little yellow c. The cockatrice. It can turn you to stone if it manages to successfully get that attack off on you. Never fear, though – if you have a stone to flesh spell, or you haven’t asked your god for a favor lately, you may be saved. If you’re good and you kill it and you have a pair of gloves, you can pick it up and beat monsters to death with it, turning them to stone and then breaking apart their statues to get their belongings. If you’ve been struck blind by something and you’re feeling your way along the dungeon and you’re not wearing gloves and you feel your way across a cockatrice corpse, presto changeo you’re stone. And if you polymorph into a cockatrice and lay eggs, you have little balls of paralysis – or if you let them hatch you have a little army of cockatrices until they get hungry and eat each other.

That’s ONE creature. Granted, not all of them are that amusing; still, most every item in the game has an interesting and special use.

I have played this game and its variants on and off for about fifteen years, give or take, and I have never completed it. I have gotten past the graveyard level into the levels of Hell, but no further – and that was with cheating…

12

Please, if you are going to try any video game - try and play for a while - Planescape: Torment. It is considered by many to be one of the greatest computer role playing games ever hula’d. Based on the 2nd edition AD&D rules, it the game can be played many different ways, based on the class you follow, the skills you assign, and your alignment - your overall attitude on life - is generated on the fly as you respond to situations.

There are quests, skills, nice graphics, etc, but the real thing is the story. It’s excellently told, if you find it original or not. Would make a good book, kind of along the lines as Memento meets I don’t know what. Romance, combat, humor, Shena Easton playing a fiendling, succubi, a grim and determined hero, floating skulls, an eternal war, a man trying to redeem himself - if you want him to…

Otherwise, if you don’t like this, play:

Sanitarium - if you like adventures - fantastic, strange, but very cohesive in its own way

Arcanum - an RPG - Dwarves with rifles, Orcs in tophats - D&D meets 1860

Wizardry 8 - a natch - you liked Wizardry - a helluva good game

I’ll second System Shock 2 - I’ve played SS1 to death and really loved SS2 - but it can be very difficult depending how you play. I hear they ripped this game off to make Doom 3 - sounds right. Very ingenious use of sounds, etc.

Fallout 1 & 2 - you HAVE to play these if you like RPGs

Unreal Tournament 2004 - kill, kill, KILL!!! Fun, but if you want to relax - I find it impossible to play this and relax - fun - yes - relaxing - no - I only play in onslaught mode, myself. Me kill with tank :slight_smile:

Neverwinter Nights Platinum - very nice graphics, some fun stories, so 3.0 D&D, awesome, multiplayer

I loved Dark Age of Camelot - but the problem with most all MMORPG’s is that it takes too much time - I only have an hour here and an hour there - not any more :frowning:

Good luck!

13

Since I got The Sims 2, I’ve played it more, and kept going back to it more often, than about $200 worth of other games I’ve bought since (Doom 3, FarCary, Rome: Total War, and various console games).

I’ve got a ton of different stories going on right now, and ideas for more sims I want to create and more stuff I want to do with them. Sometimes I just turn it on and build houses, sometimes I try to further a story along, sometimes I just let it play out and see what the sims do on their own. And I’m still compelled to go back to it. It’s not the game for everybody, but I think it’s completely engrossing.

14

For another great FPS, get Vietcong: Purple Haze. This is the original Vietcong with the ‘Fist Alpha’ upgrade added on automatically.

I believe that Vietcong is the most underrated FPS ever. Why?

First of all, it captures the feel of the jungle better than any game I’ve ever played. Particularly in the Fist Alpha levels, the jungle is a convoluted, confusing environment with plants everywhere (and each one is a real plant which moves in the wind,) hills, valleys, rivers and streams, and trees all over the place. It feels like a real jungle, often without clear-cut trails to follow, and where enemies are well-hidden, making it more suspenseful and tense. You need to take cover all the time, just like you would in a real battle, constantly ducking behind trees and logs.

There is an amazing array of weapons, but it’s a realistic system: you can carry one pistol and one rifle at one time, no more, and you must drop a weapon to make room for another one. As for the types of weapons, it’s mind-boggling: there are so many it’s impossible to even go into. I think there are about 30 different rifles total, and NO game but this one accurately captures the feel of using a real rifle. Many of them are bolt-action, and it’s a lot of fun to try to pick off as many enemies as you can while having to deal with single-shot reload. Available as a sniper rifle, to my great glee, is the Winchester 70 (a long, ponderous, slow and extraordinarily powerful bolt-action hunting rifle.) There are old bolt-action Soviet rifles, semi-autos like SKS, shotguns, many different types of submachine guns and machineguns (disc, clip, and belt)…it’s just an insanely diverse and very fun array of weapons. Each weapon can be picked before every mission, and tested out, in the firing range area of the base that you retire to between each deployment.

The multiplayer is a tremendous amount of fun, especially Capture the Flag, and there are people playing all the time (no deserted servers and outdated versions all over the place.) Despite the critical panning this part of the game got in many reviews, I think the multiplayer is fun as hell.

Get Vietcong, especially now that it’s cheap as hell. Also, it runs smoothly despite the enormous amount of realistic foliage in the levels, on almost any newer machine.