I got away from games several years ago, but recently returned. There are a lot of games out there, but it’s difficult to figure out which ones are any good. I recently finished Call of Duty Black Ops, Medal of Honor Warfighter (buggy bastard), and Crysis 2. The makers of Halo couldn’t be bothered to come out with a PC version of Halo3, so that’s out, and I don’t want to shell out the money for CODBO 2 until the reviews are in.
I’m running Windows 7x64 and have enough power to run most anything out there. I don’t do online gaming. I’m really only interested in first person shooter games. Any suggestions?
Are you purely interested in fast paced bang-bang or can it include other elements?
You can get Metro 2033 for as cheap as a buck right now through the Humble THQ Bundle. Atmospheric FPS game with horror elements (which means periods of suspenseful inaction). Can be played straight shooter or stealth. Very linear.
Along the same lines, I enjoyed Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl which is much more open world and has some RPG elements (missions, join-able factions) but nothing like leveling up or involved dialogue. You can pick up this title (and the sequel, Call of Pripyat) for less than $5 each during the online sales this Christmas.
Far Cry & Far Cry 2 can be picked up for $6 for the pair. Far Cry was better reviewed; I think me and six other people liked Far Cry 2 but I personally enjoyed it.
Speaking of, Far Cry 3’s been getting rave reviews and was just released (or will be tomorrow depending on your region/vendor). Another open world game.
Homefront is a traditional linear military shooter. Koreans invade the US and you need to shoot them. I thought it felt pretty generic and disliked some aspects of it but if you’re looking for a straight bad guy shooter, it’d qualify. Wait for winter sales, it goes down to $5 or less.
Darkness II is a linear, plot driven FPS with you as a mobster possessed by demon powers. You not only get to shoot guns but manipulate inky tendrils from your back, grabbing enemies, picking up shields, impaling your foes with rebar or cutting bad guys in half with car doors. Another $5 holiday special.
Older titles include the Bioshock series and Half Life 2 which people rave about today. I know a lot of these stray from straight military campaign shooter but thought I’d throw them out there.
I only got a stage or two in before getting distracted by a new shiny game but Syndicate is a pretty straight-forward near-future shooter. There’s some tech/superpower style elements to it which shouldn’t be an issue if you liked Crysis.
I hated BLOCK OPs. In fact call of duty sucks, except for the multi.
I was going to recommend far Cry 3 as well, so I’ll double up on it.
I’d also recommend Borderlands 2, Bullet Storm, Bioshock 1 & 2 (in case you missed them), Battlefield 3 (though the multi is the best part of that game by far), STALKER Call of Pripiat (if you missed it), Metro 2033.
If you’re into stealth based FPS games I’d recommend Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
If you ever consider multi… well that’s pretty much were PC dominates the genre.
Thanks for the suggestions so far. Some of them I’ve likely played in the past, but most are new names for me. The only issue is whether they will play on Windows 7. I know that Crysis (I&II) both call for earlier versions, but both play perfectly well on W7. I suppose for $5, it’s not exactly a gamble.
I run W7 X64 and have no issues other than M&B is a little bit laggy during a full battle on full settings. That’s likely the fault of the rather low end video card the machine came with.
If you do change your mind irt multiplayer, you can pick up Planetside 2 for free. It’s been out for about two weeks now. There’s a good number of Dopers who play it nearly every night.
I’ll be in later with recommendations about games, but here is my one important recommendation: Do not buy stuff now. If you wait 3 weeks, you will have a vast array of incredibly cheap games to choose from during the steam winter sale. Whatever money you spend now would be better spent buying 4x as many games for the same price then.
There’s also very little concern things won’t run on a windows 7 machine. Only 10+ year old games might require some tweaking to get things working, but there are specialty sites like gog.com that make sure games come in a working package for old games.
Sure, grab that. Don’t be a cheapass and give $5 though. Those people are the worst ever. Plus Metro 2033 and COH are great games. Saints Row row is pretty great too - it’s like a GTA that doesn’t take itself seriously. Darksiders is fun I hear. Red Faction, meh. Anyway, that’s a very awesome bundle worth a decent buy/donation price.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution and STALKER Call of Pripiat are NOT straight-ahead first-person shooters. There’s all kinds of non-linearity in those games. They go into FPS mode, sort-of, during battles. I guess they are really role-playing games.
If you like role-playing games, I have never enjoyed a game series more than Mass Effect. I just love those games. I tried the STALKER games and couldn’t get into them, but I’m working through Deus Ex now. I found the Mass Effect games to be more polished, with a better story and better voice acting than those other ones.
Anyway, I’m also posting to subscribe, because I wouldn’t mind getting into a new Half-Life/Doom-style FPS series.
Don’t get Black ops II, worst money I have spent. The story line is OK, but each mission is basically on rails and is just run and gun. Then you have to sit through interminable cut scenes, OK once, but there is no way to skip through them when you have already sat through them once and the game crashes.
I can’t get into multiplayer to work either and the load times are horrific in single player, I have an i7 3770k and 16gigs but I am relying on the onboard Intel 4000 GPU, so probably my fault there.
So other than that no other recomendations, but also will be on the look out for some suggestions.
The COD games are never worth what they cost, especially if you’re only going to play single player. COD4 is the last of the games I can recommend in good conscience. But Activision is just short sighted and greedy with their pricing strategy - you will never pick up one of them for $5 as you will be able to with stuff like Bioshock, Metro 2033, etc.
Mollusc, using a 3770k with an integrated GPU is a crime against humanity. Fix it.
Yes I need a “hanging head in” shame emoticon, alas the PC upgrading budget ran out. I was planning on using the graphics card I had (GE8600) that was with the old MoBo and processor and was cutting edge, a long time ago. Now it just borks, barfs and generally fails to operate as intended with the new Mobo and processor.
Well, that would still be comically outdated anyway. Grab a 7770 for $100 or whatever, at least. I mean, I’d pair it with something better, but that’s a very cheap option that would be orders of magnitude of improvement.
