Recommend a computer game to me, please.

Cafe Society
1

Yeah, I know.

This is a lame question, but I’ve been out of the loop for a while. I just don’t play games.

My gaming background:

I played pencil-and-paper RPGs in high school and college. It was mostly D&D 2nd Ed, but I preferred Runequest. A friend tried to get me interested in Paranoia, and it was sort of fun, but I’m an engineer who’s not terribly creative, so I dropped out.

I sort of played Doom and Duke Nukem 3D because a coworker gave me the demo disks. He wanted to set up an online game or something, and wanted me to try them out. I had better things to do with my time back then, so I declined.

Not much to work with there, huh?

I’m looking for a single-player game I can just waste time with. I’m not terribly interested in playing online.

I prefer strategy games, but I’d also like a recommendation for a simple first-person shooter for blowing off steam.

Can I get a little help?

2

FPS:

Half-life & Counter Strike - it’s one of the best for single player.

3

I recommend Planescape: Torment if you want an interesting game that’s got a tremendous story.

4

For strategy gaming, I would suggest:

Civilization II (I’m not a big fan of Civ III, though the patches do make the game better) If you can find it, it’ll be cheap.

Master of Orion II (Once again, I’m not a big fan of MOO 3, but that might be fixed with a couple good patches) There’s a jewel case only version out now for something like 10 bucks.

Rollercoaster Tycoon: Gold Edition (And I’m not a big fan of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 either) Contains the original game and both expansion packs for something like 20 bucks.

Hey, this is interesting. All the games I like with sequels I don’t really like have had the sequels published by Infogrames.

Anyway, back to the recommendations.

Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper 2. Both are available in a 2-disc collection for, once again, something like 10 bucks.

There’s the Sim City line. Sim City, Sim City 2000, and Sim City 3000. There is also the massively popular spinoff The Sims (which I don’t like) and lots of older SimWhatever games, like Sim Ant, Sim Earth, Sim Life, Sim Tower, and probably others that I’ve missed.

That’s about all the strategy games I’ve played, but I know lots of people who like Starcraft and similar games. Not quite my cup of tea, as I prefer something a little more turnbased, although DK and DK2 are real-time.

RPGs:

I, at least, have this feeling like all the RPGs for the computer are generally MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games). Personally, I hate MMORPGs, and you said you weren’t interested in online gameplay, so stay away from these.

There are RPGs out there for single player. I believe Square has ported Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, and Final Fantasy IX, which you might or might not like. There are some other games out there that are now in the bargain bin like Septerra Core, which I didn’t really care for.

Honestly, most RPGs I play are console-based. I don’t really play them on the computer.

There’s always also the declining genre of adventure games. What I would look for would be:

All four Monkey Island games. My copies of The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge came bundled with a $15 copy of The Curse of Monkey Island. Escape From Monkey Island, being the latest game, is probably going to be the most expensive, but I would still expect it to be pretty cheap. (I just realized what a weird name Monkey Island is, after typing it all those times, and I guess I really should put in the trademark symbol.)

Other fun games in this category are Grim Fandango and Sam and Max, both of which were also released by LucasArts. Starship Titanic is another fun game, as it’s based on a throwaway line in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker books and had a nearly simultaneous release with a book written by Terry Jones (who also provides the voice of the parrot.) A darker game would be Blade Runner, which is quite fun and captures the feeling of the movie very well.

Heck, for that matter, see if you can track down LucasArts other old adventure games, like Loom, Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (the rest of the Indiana Jones games just aren’t that good.)

There are so many games out there, and a lot of them are older. Unfortunately, the older they are, the harder they might be to acquire legally, and I’m not going to bring up how to get them otherwise here at the SDMB.

5

FPS:

If you’re a Trekkie, pick up Elite Force. It’s a first-person shooter where you’re in charge of an away team. Haven’t played it myself (not a big Trek fan to begin with) but it got excellent reviews. Sequel’s coming out in another two months, or so.

There’s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series for a more tactical, realistic game. I think the latest is called Raven Shield.

I’ll second Half-Life, arguably one of the best PC games ever made. It’s several years old by now, but the graphics still hold up and the game play is unsurpassed.

I’m not much for real-time strategy, but anything put out by Blizzard is fantastic almost by default. Warcraft III and Diablo II are both good time-killers with a D&D flavor. For something with a wider-scope and less frenetic mouse-clicking, get Civilization III: I’ve spent more time on this game than any two other PC games combined.

6

I find RPGs on the computer to be a far more enjoyable experience than the console version (and far more worthy of the term RPG). They certainly are not limited to MMORPGs.

My recommendations :

Fallout 1 & 2
Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 (as well as the Throne of Bhaal expansion)
Icewind Dale
Planescape : Torment
Morrowind
Arcanum

7

Half-Life, Deus Ex and System Shock 2 are my favorite shooters (DE and SS2 have some RPG aspects). Serious Sam 2 is great if you are just in the mood to blow a buncha stuff up real good.

Warcraft 3 is a blast, with a lot of humorous bits you can discover while you play. An expansion pack is also due out soon.

8

I would suggest Freelancer to anyone looking for a good PC game. It’s a space shooter - go around blasting pirates and the like - but you can buy your own ships and outfit them and it’s got a good story.

Kind of RPG like, in a simplistic way, but also allows you to blow the SHIT out of some pirate scum.

I’m not too big on Warcraft 3 as the story is a once through affair then you’ve got to play it online to get any more value from it, or play the PC over and over again.

If you really like PnP RPGs, you can give a try to Never Winter Nights, though I personally got a bit annoyed with the game. It’s somewhat entertaining and there’s lots of user levels and dungeons you can download now, so it’s got much more content than what comes in the box, without relying on someone else to play with you.

One final RPG I want to mention is Morrowind, though it requires a fairly heafty PC to run. It’s one of the best single-player only RPGs I’ve played in a long time. Good story, very open ended and you have great choices in character development. This is another game that is helped greatly by internet downloads for more content - everything from new houses that you can own to new classes and class tweaks, such as the Marksman download.

If you want something a bit slower, more thinking and managing, Simcity 4 is a great time. At least, I think so.

9

Support your local OpenGL programmers! :slight_smile:

If you’re interested in shooters, I would go with Serious Sam 2. I just picked it up today from a dump bin, and I have no idea how this game slipped by me when it was new. The graphics are awesome and it’s just plain fun.

I would also recommend Quake, which has an awesome (but dated) single player game, and Quake III, which is an arena-type FPS that’s really geared toward online play, but is still lots of fun to play with bots. Return to Castle Wolfenstein is an excellent World War II FPS that I see has recently been marked down at Wal-Mart.

(BTW Miller, I bought Elite Force and it the gameplay is pretty good, but the models look awful. The grunts in Quake look better, and that came out in like 96?)

I’ve been John Carmack’s little bitch since Commander Keen. :slight_smile:

10

I’ll jump in and say Half-Life for your FPS game. Its older, but alot of new games still use the Half-Life engine. Half-Life has everything you need in an FPS. Action, Puzzles, Great Story, Cool Graphics, Humor, Gore…

One problem though, you didn’t mention what type of computer you have? Alot of games these days are very demanding on your system Processor, Memory and Graphics wise.

I haven’t played a stand-alone RPG in ages because I’m hooked on MMORPGS, but I’ve heard excellent things about Neverwinter Nights and its based precisely on the D&D Ruleset.

11

Civ 2 or Civ 3. Period.

12

What is your specs on the computer? If you’ve been out of the loop for too long (over 4-5 years), it won’t be able to run the latest games. Mind you, the silver lining is that you could by a whole heap of older games under $5 ;p

13

Both Serious Sam and Serious Sam 2 are fantastic. Deus Ex rocks for story and for being a shooter. Also look at Unreal Tournament. Still a blast for a shooter.

14

Well, you can hardly go wrong with Willie Crowther and Don Woods’ original ADVENTURE game. Written in the early 1970s for a PDP-7, it’s been ported to nearly every platform under the sun, and easily fits in 64K of RAM.

If you’ve never played, you will be unaware of the majestic Zeitgeist imposed on that and subsequent generations by such marvels as the Maze of Twisty Little Passages, All Alike, and the dragon that you have to kill with your

bare hands (unbelievable, isn’t it?)

and XYZZY and PLUGH and, depending on which edition you play, the intense frustration of figuring out how to get that final lousy 350th point.

Not to mention the thrill of drawing your own maps that resemble a state diagram.

15

How about Homeworld for an RTS? It can be a little slow, but I thought it was really quite good. Plus, it’ll get you primed for the sequel that’s coming out in June (and which is supposed to be even better).

For a FPS, try Aliens vs. Predator 2. I think it’s one of the best I’ve played, partly because there are three campaigns: aliens, predator, and marine. Each race has a different perspective, but the entire story of the incident only becomes clear once you’ve played all three.

16

It’s too bad you aren’t into online games, because Battlefield 1942 is one of the funnest FPS/action games around.

But for a single player FPS - No One Lives Forever and it’s sequel were both very good, and a lot of fun. Max Payne, while not exactly an FPS, is really good for blowing off steam - it’s great to bust through a door and slow down time to 1/10 it’s normal speed, so you can shoot each of the three goons in their head before they have a chance to react. I also second the recomendation of Deus Ex, it combines FPS with RPG in a way that really works.

I know you didn’t ask for any RPG suggestions, but if you have only played console RPGs you need to try Fallout or Fallout 2, especially if you like playing pen and paper RPGs. Arcanum is also a very good RPG with a detailed character creation system and a really open-ended game world.

17

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I didn’t think to mention my system specs since I just got the thing in February. It’s not top-of-the-line, but it’s not too bad: 1.8 GHz Pentium 4, 256 MB DDR-SDRAM. I’m ashamed to admit that I have no idea what the system bus speed is.

I know absolutely nothing about current consoles because I was never really that interested. The last system I owned was a Sega Genesis, if that’s any indication. I got really bored with it and gave it away.

Trust me, folks. I am utterly clueless on this subject, and you are all a big help.

18

I’m not much of a first person shooter type, so I can’t offer any suggestions there. As far as strategy, I am a big fan of the Civ games. Any of them can be lots of fun. I like playing the scenarios on one of the Civ III message boards. It’s fun to see how you stack up against other players.

For an RPG, I really like Morrowind and Daggerfall. Daggerfall is several years old now and probably very difficult to come by, but it remains my favorite RPG. Morrowind is the third in the Elder Scrolls trilogy (Daggerfall is the second) and is also a lot of fun to play. Your machine meets all the requirements listed. Well, as long as your video card matches up with the rest of the computer anyway. Morrowind is a very graphics intensive game.

Good luck choosing a game…or two…or three!

19

If you’re looking for RPGs I’d highly recommend anything from Black Isle Studios (the publisher/developer) i.e. Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 for the fantasy fan and Fallout 1 & 2 (very highly recommended) for the sci-fi fan. Personally, I thought Morrowind was a major waste of time and money. You end up spending too much time doing pointless stuff just to raise your skill levels. A far better game both in story and execution is Neverwinter Nights - also from Black Isle.
I’ll also put in a plug for Mechwarrior 2 & 3. Both great games for blasting the crap out of stuff and letting off some steam. Don’t get conned by MW 4 though. It’s garbage.

To get a good look at what’s available and get some pretty decent reviews of games, go check out Gamespot or The Adrenaline Vault. Either of those sites (and many others) post reviews of new games and give you a pretty good idea of what’s available and what’s good vs. what not to waste your money on. Have fun!

20

Commander Keen. Mars. Crystal Caves. Zork.

Those were less about how cool they look, more about gameplay.

p.s. I’m not saying games now don’t focus on gameplay, I’m just saying a lot seem to just focus on pretty pictures.