Good PC games from the past 3-4 years

The Game Room
1

I am in search of some PC games with great graphics. A recent upgrade to my computer is allowing me to finally play many of the great games that have come out in the past few years. If it isn’t very graphics intensive, odds are I have played it already on my older machine, but feel free to mention great games anyway in case someone here missed it. I’m open to almost any genre as long as the game isn’t too buggy to be worth playing.

Since the upgrade I’ve played through:
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty 5: World At War
Fallout 3
Psychonauts
Crysis
Left 4 Dead

What other recent games should I check out?

2

It’s slightly outside your range (5 years old), but if you haven’t before, you must play Half Life 2 and its expansions.

3

Good one! I’ve actually played the base game of Half Life 2, but I had to have the graphics fairly low, so low in fact I deemed it not worth playing the expansions. I’ll put this one on the top of the list.

4

See, I went to Half Life 2 and what not after playing more modern FPS games and it doesn’t hold up. The pacing is too tedious and the controls aren’t as polished.

5

Mass Effect, Crysis Warhead, Empire Total War, TES-IV Oblivion.

6

Ooh, Oblivion is a good one. Empire: Total War will get there, but if you don’t want something “buggy”, then wait.

7

I’m still using an old system so it’s the newest game I’ve played, pretty much. Anyway, the OP hasn’t played those new games yet.

8

For racing, check out Dirt and the upcoming Fuel.

9

Half Life 2 is fun but I found after I played through it once it I didn’t get anything out of playing through it a second time. Too many parts in that game drag or are annoying to me. I’ve found the stand alone episodes much more enjoyable. Pacing is tighter and things just feel better designed. I’d highly recommend you move on to those instead of re-playing Half Life 2

Portal there’s no reason not to get this. Heck even my wife (who hates FPS’s played through it and loved it. She’s even talking about playing through it a second time lately which is unheard of)

Not really graphics intensive but a good game you might have overlooked is Sins of a Solar Empire it’s sort of Civilization meets Starcraft but it is very slow moving so if you want something more fast paced it might not be for you. It also has a expansion pack called Entrenchment

A real iffy one is X3: Terran Conflict space sim where you can go from flying the smallest explorer craft to owning gigantic fleets and factories. The graphics are jaw dropping (nothing like taking a tiny craft and skimming the belly of some huge station to realize the scale of this game). But be prepared to patch as this game is a buggy mess until you do and the difficulty curve is more of a sheer rock face. It’s still one of my favorite series but I understand why others have problems with it.

10

BioShock for sure, and I haven’t played it yet myself but I’ve heard good things about Dead Space.

11

Far Cry 2 is decent. You don’t need to have played the first one, they don’t really follow on from each other story-wise.

If you’re into RTS games, there’s Dawn of War 2 and Supreme Commander.

12

I was going to suggest “Fallout 3”, but I see it’s already on your list.

I’m currently spending time with both “Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08” and “Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance” with all the bells and whistles turned on at 1920x1200 resolution.

They’re both absolutely GORGEOUS, and fun!

May I ask what are the specs of your upgraded system?

13

Many great suggestions, thank you. I think I’ll be set for months at this rate.

22" widescreen monitor, 1680x1050 resolution. Soooo pretty!
2.5 Ghz 9850 Quadcore processor
4 Gb of duel channel ram
Nvidia 9800 GTX graphics card 512mb
600 Gb Sata hard drive
Windows XP pro
1x IDE DVD drive (knew I forgot to order something when piecing it together, found this in the closet)

Up from my old computer of:
17" CRT monitor
2.4 Ghz AMD Athlon processor
1.5 Gb ram, unknown clock speed
ATI 9600pro video card
250 Gb IDE hard drive
Windows 2000 server edition

It’s been a hell of an upgrade.

14

Seconding Portal, its a short game but its a gaming experience that shouldn’t be missed.

15

Sweet! I never knew Supreme Commander had an expansion pack! It looks like it’s stand alone too so I don’t have to dig out my copy of the original. I’m downloading this tonight, thanks for mentioning it!