Having discovered Humble Bundles, Bundle Stars, giveaways, Steam sales et cetera, I have built up a huge library of Steam games. However, because of this embarrassment of riches I have no idea what is worth playing and what is not.
I have broken my games down into categories. Please feel free to let me know if a particular game would be better off in a different category. If I have played a game I will note what I thought of it. For reference, the games I have played the most of would be Borderlands 2, Total War: Shogun 2 and Skyrim.
Okay, here’s the list:
ACTION
Alpha Protocol - played a few minutes of this. It was a semi-fun shooter although I hated having to turn off alarms every encounter. I could not pass the first hacking puzzle and lost interest at that point. I assume further hacking puzzles will be both necessary and difficult. Too bad, the game had potential.
Anomaly 2
Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY - played for half an hour. Being Batman is fun. I assume this will be a good series but I want to play through this one first.
Batman Arkham City GOTY
Batman Arkham Origins
Binary Domain
Call of Juarez Gunslinger
Counter-Strike (also CS: Condition Zero, Global Offensive and Source)
Day of Defeat
Far Cry - I have played this before and hated the difficulty curve.
Far Cry 2
Far Cry 3 - I have played a bit of this, to where I am in the village and can free roam. The game was described to me as Skyrim with guns but it never grabbed me.
Hitman: Codename 47
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
Hitman Blood Money
Hitman Absolution
Hitman Sniper Challenge
Just Cause 2
Medal of Honor Single Player
Metro 2033
Mirror’s Edge
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
Operation Flashpoint: Red River
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
Renegade Ops
Shadow Warrior
Sleeping Dogs - GTA on foot with no guns. I got about half an hour into this and then got bored.
Sniper Elite V2
Spec Ops: The Line - Played for 16 minutes, died repeatedly courtesy of invisible enemies who can shoot around corners. I want to like this game.
Team Fortress Classic
Team Fortress 2
To be continued…
FANTASY (I have not played many of these at all)
Child of Light Demo - just waiting for the game to go on sale for less than $10.
The First Templar
Inquisitor
The Lord of the Rings: The War in the North
Overlord
Overlord: Raising Hell
Overlord 2
Rise of the Argonauts
Risen
Risen 2 Dark Waters
Sacred 2 Gold
Sacred Citadel
HALF LIFE
Half Life
Half Life 2
Deathmatch
2 Episode 1
2 Episode 2
2 Lost Coast
Deathmatch Source
Blue Shift
Opposing Force
Source
MISC
Combat Wings: Battle of Britain
Hell Yeah!
Mafia II
Pinball FX 2 - played a few tables, good mindless fun
Portal - got stuck on the first really challenging map, lost interest
Portal 2
Sid Meier’s Civilization III Complete
Superfrog HD
The Typing of the Dead: Overkill
Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior
Worms (Armaggedon, Blast, Crazy Golf, Pinball, Revolution, Ultimate Mayhem)
RACING
Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box - Need for Speed in slightly different clothes
DiRT 3
DiRT Showdown
GTR Evolution
MX vs ATV Reflex
RACE 07
RaceRoom Racing Experience
Test Drive Unlimited 2 - pain in the ass to get set up, beautiful game although I haven’t set foot in a car yet.
RETRO
Heli Heroes - reminds me of Sega’s old Thunder Blade or other top-down shooters. Mindless fun.
Mortal Kombat Collection
SEGA Genesis and Mega Drive Classics
Shadow Warrior Classic - Not as fun as I remember but whoooo wanta some Wang?
RTS
Anno 2070 - everything about this game is a pain in the ass! Gorgeous graphics though.
Company of Heroes (New Steam Version) - WWII era C&C, has potential.
SCI FI
Alien Breed (Impact, Assault and Descent)
Aliens: Colonial Marines - Not as bad as I thought it would be. Just like being in the movie.
Bioshock 2
Bioshock Infinite - I have seen gameplay and it looks alright.
Borderlands- much harder than Borderlands 2!
The Bureau XCOM Declassified
Crysis 2 Maximum Edition
The Darkness II
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director’s Cut
Dishonored (with all the DLCs)
FEAR (also Extraction Point, Perseus Mandate, 2 Project Origin and 3)
Far Cry Blood Dragon - looks like all kinds of 80’s nostalgia fun
Hard Reset
Red Faction (also II, Armaggedon and Guerrilla)
XCOM Enemy Unknown
Zeno Clash 2
TOTAL WAR
Empire
Medieval II
Napoleon
Rome
TROPICO
Entire series up to 4
ZOMBIES
Dead Island - beautiful game, got tired of repetitive zombie killing
Dead Space
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
There’s a few others but this will be a good start. Any must-haves in here? Any I should uninstall because they suck? And which one must I absolutely, positively must play next?
Just a few from my recommended shortlist:
- Burnout Paradise (I have a huuuuge soft spot for this series, and while this outing suffers from a few design mistakes that Burnout 3, the gem in the series, didn’t, it’s still a ton of fun to scrap the competitor’s cars for extra boost, and the open world makes for some very interesting races.)
- Spec Ops (Keep trying. Maybe at a lower difficulty. This game is not fun, but it is every bit as good as the hype. Give it a little while to get going, and… well, you’ll see why Yahtzee Crowshaw called it “one for the history books” and rated it his best game of 2012)
- Just Cause 2 (Oh look, another one recommended by Yahtzee. This game is pretty much the ultimate sandbox. It’s just so. Much. FUN. The only sandbox game I’ve ever played the held a candle to the sheer unmitigated insanity of this game was Saint’s Row 3, and that game intentionally devolved into self-parody. JC2 is just one of those games where you can hookshot a motorbike to a jet plane and ramp off it at 30,000 feet onto an old lady. SO MUCH FUN.)
Half Life 2. Wait, you haven’t played this yet?
Portal. Give it another shot. Or at least watch a let’s play
Portal 2. This game is just a blast. Not much else to say about it.
Crysis 2. Played it, loved it. Lots of fun, really pretty visuals.
You seem to have a low threshold for difficulty or getting stuck. I’d play Call of Juarez: Gunslinger on easy. Linear shooter with a fun narration, good voice acting, and good gunplay.
Mafia II is a third person “crime game” but with much more plot emphasis than GTA or Saints Row. The open world look it has is misleading, it’s really more of a semi-linear game with some open world elements. I liked it a good deal but a lot of people get hung up on it not just being 1950s GTA.
Don’t bother with Mirror’s Edge. The controls on the PC port are pretty bad (and don’t think of trying it with mouse and keyboard, use a gamepad).
It’s a game with an intriguing mechanic executed badly. The story is unimaginative (which is a shame since it’s written by Terry Pratchett’s daughter).
The combat mechanics are just horrid. It was like the programmers decided that they couldn’t make an action game without some type of combat. So rather than tweaking the few areas where the parkour could have been programmed a bit better and forget about combat entirely, they decided to throw in a whole different set of mechanics that were just awful.
The game had a great premise and a lot of promise, but fell far short of its potential.
In your list, I noted Tropico. This is one of my favourite games, and I always come back to it from time to time for a couple games (I never play it for an extended duration). It’s rich and fun (though not that easy). And a game isn’t absurdly long.
There are some differences between the versions, but I would just play the latest.
The Batman games are all excellent. Definitely finish Asylum first, and maybe take a break before tackling City and again before tackling Origins. You don’t want to burn out as they all feature very similar mechanics, with refinements.
My game recommendations for those breaks are:
Deus Ex Human Revolution -Best stealth game in a while. Decent story, excellent mechanics - challenging if you ant it to be, but features lots of options to tweak your experience.
X-Com Enemy unknown - Super fun, super addicting strategy game. Name your soldiers, watch them grow in skills and power, then cry manly tears as they are torn to bits because of a critical error.
Portal 2 - On my top 10 list of last gen games. The puzzles are easier.
It’s hard to go back to older total War titles from Shogun, as that’s such an excellent game. Either jump on Rome II (now that it’s a decent game thanks to 14 patches! - download patch 14 beta if you do get it soon) or give Napoleon a shot. It’s got a much more directed campaign which suits me fine, as managing colonial empires was a bit of a hassle in the vanilla Empire: Total war game.
Oh and don’t give up on Sleeping Dogs! It’s one of the best open world games out there right now. The unarmed combat only gets better and better.
Some other recommendations: Don’t bother with Far Cry 2. Terrible game. Go for Far Cry 3. The expansion, is super crazy fun. If you really can’t get into Sleeping Dogs, give Mafia II a shot. It’s got guns.
I thought Far Cry 2 was a good game – one of those “Found out later I was supposed to hate it” things. But it also has some very real issues with it that would keep me from recommending it.
The whole “Far Cry 3 is Skyrim with guns” came from a game review that Ubisoft then incorporated into their promotional videos because who doesn’t want some reflected Skyrim glory. It was a stupid comment though since FC3 isn’t like Skyrim with guns aside from both being nominally open world games and first person perspective. FC3 is a shooter, it has some very mild RP elements such as a shallow crafting system and a few optional side quests but it’s not a RPG. If you want “Skyrim with guns”, as in an open world RPG where you can ignore the main quest and wander around and do a bajillion side quests and explore a billion pointless locations, play Fallout 3 which are both by Bethesda and play essentially the same way. FO3 actually pre-dates Skyrim so I guess Skyrim is really “Fallout 3 with dragons” but whatever.
If this is the case, stay away from Metro 2033.
I got stuck twice, first time I had to use a cheat to get through. Second time was due to those damn fragile gas masks near the end. Tried several times to get through that and tried a few different cheats; nothing worked. Gave up and uninstalled in disgust.
Well, it’s not that I don’t love a challenge… I think I still have shell shock from playing too many hours of MOHAA back in the day. Hence my trauma regarding invisible enemies who can shoot around corners. The Alpha Protocol puzzles were just insane - you have 15 seconds to find two words that are moving on a background of moving letters.
Thanks for all the suggestions so far! I will definitely try all the recommended games.
YES! That damn first lock puzzle, WTF?
I’m a pretty hardcore gamer, IMHO. From Grand strategy to difficult action/stealth games, to deep RPGs with complex mechanics, I hardly ever shy away from stuff when it comes to games, but this puzzle… I think I must have been doing something wrong in terms of how I was handling the input. I found it the most frustrating mechanic, EVER. In the first like 15 minutes of the game.
This is another vote for Portal 2.
Stick it out through the puzzles. It’s worth it.
Definitely seconding Batman. I played the first (asylum) and it rocked. I’m waiting for City to go on sale but am definitely getting it.
Here’s what else I’ve played from your list:
Half Life and Half Life 2 (and all the episodes) This series is great IMO. The difficulty curve isn’t too insane and it’s got a cool X-Files-ish story that kept me interested through both games.
Team Fortress 2 is a Half Life 2 mod, or it was (I think it’s a standalone game now). It’s basically a multiplayer team deathmatch. Just run around and shoot other players. There’s different modes like capture the flag and different maps. It can be a lot of fun if you get people with similar skill levels to yours.
Overlord was funny and different but not game of the year material or anything.
Seconding the X-Com Enemy Unknown recommendation. It took me a couple tries to figure out how to get started (get satellites up and get as much coverage as you can ASAP or you will have money problems!) but once I figured it out, it was awesome.
Think thats it. I have a couple other games on your list but I have a decent backlog myself that I’m working on 
so I haven’t played them yet.