What are the best PC games of all time?

Cafe Society
41

Wow, are these ever tough to rank. I stuck with best-in-genre for the most part. My criteria are skewed toward successfuly implementation, as opposed to popular appeal. Anything groundbreaking or innovative received a boost onto or up the list, as did games with customizable content.

  1. Stunts The most fun driving game on a computer I ever played.

  2. 4D Sports Boxing Most satisfying punches ever, on par with Fight Night.

  3. Links Golf The definitive golf game on the computer.

  4. X-Com Best turn-based strategy game ever.

  5. Lemmings Innovative, fun, and highly addictive.

  6. Dynamix Football Pro Later became Frontpage Sports Football Pro, this series was far superior in the late 90s than any console football game to date. ESPN’s now defunct 2k franchise, as well as Madden, is but a shell of a game in comparison. Nothing before nor since has approached the perfection of Dynamix when it comes to football games.

  7. Doom II So good. Too good; I still have my own custom audio wad file, with soundbites mostly from Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Aliens, and Predator, plus a few other random sources toseed in. This game ruled.

  8. Populous II Way ahead of its time, this was the precursor to the entire RTS genre, and it allowed serial cable links for head to head action. It isn’t built on a traditional RTS paradigm, as such a thing was yet to exist. It is unique in its greatness.

  9. Starcraft (Broodwars) Best traditional RTS game ever. While Warcraft was phenomenal, and AoE was great, Starcraft was the ultimate game, made even better by the introduction of medics.

And the greatest game ever made is…

  1. Star Control 2 Bar none, the best computer game ever made. Immersive content, non-linear storyline, vast game universe, diverse encounters, engaging arcade-style melee action, this game has it all. One of the pioneer greats in the adventure RPG genre.
42

In no particular order:

Railroad Tycoon

Civ 2

Leisure Suit Larry

The Seventh Guest

Myst

Doom

ChessMaster 2000

Links

Sim City

Descent

Wolf Pack

Solitare

43

In no particular order:

Wing Commander (all of them)
Mechwarrior 2 (What the hell, I liked most of them)
Unreal
Far Cry
Duke Nukem 3D
Doom
Half-Life
Blood
Redneck Rampage (come on! Someone make a sequel alreadyRedneck ).
Serious Sam 1&2
Ultima Underworld
Ground Control (not the second one which is crap)
First couple of Star Wars FPS’s, and the first couple of Jedi series
Heavy Metal FAKK 2

44

tough call on some of these

1 Tribes 1, hands down the most fun I have ever had in an fps, while Wolfenstein was the orignial every single fps that followed was nothing but a clone until T1 came out. full 3d environment and team on team battles with deployables made this game infinitly replayable. (hell I still play, the master servers went down but you can still find agame if you google for the master server someone else is hosting.

2 Everquest, (pvp) while broken and lacking in all things resembling customer service throughout its entire history this game had me hooked for years.

3 Grand Theft Auto, I dont think I can really choose between the 3d releases (3,4,5) all simply amazing in the most nonlinear mission based game ever. you can literaly complete most of the game in anyway you see fit.

4 Pirates of the Carribean…I know what youre gonna say, “that game was so frakin Buggy it was unplayable” thats beacause you didnt find the mods that the game community made for this game. absolutely amazing.

5 at this point I think I am out of favorite all time pc games. I am heavily into pvp games of most types, so the huge number of great single players dont hold much interest.

45

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Marathon, Marathon II or Marathon Infinity. These games definitely belong in any discussion of the greatest computer games of all time, but unfortunately they are largely forgotten outside of a small group of cult people who keep the games going with new mods and levels. With Aleph One you can now download these games for free (and play them on a PC as well, even though they were originally for Mac.) It’s a great FPS with an excellent sci-fi story. Definitely a predeccessor to games like System Shock and Deus Ex.

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[Humble plug]I’m pretty sure you’d know me by name.[/Humble plug] Didn’t want to blow my own horn in this thread, but since you brought it up…and it’s late and I’m surfing…

47

Hmm…I’m going to have to ask you to elaborate…

48

Seeing as how we’re the only two people awake, I won’t bother with the Quote tag…

Enable your email and we’ll talk - I relish my .01 degree of anonymity - or check my user CP and you’ll probably figure it out…

49

Mentioned already:

Doom
Half Life
Quake II
Day of the Tentacle
X-Wing

And a new one for the list:

Dune 2. The first game I bought for the PC (about a hundred years ago). When I first started it up I was really disappointed with the graphics which were worse than on my Atari ST* but how addictive was that game!

*Which still works, while the old 486 is very, very dead.

50

In no particular order:

**Doom ** - nearly said Wolfenstein but I think that this game just took it that step up

**Baldurs Gate II ** - seminal rpg for me

**World of Warcraft ** - the MMO. Agree that EQ paved the way though (and I’m slightly addicted to it)

**Tie Fighter ** - what can I say?

**X-Com ** - atmosphere was awe inspiring. Especially renaming the players to your friends and family and getting quite upset as your SO is melted…

**Deus Ex ** - immersive story and wonderful atmosphere

**Half Life ** - and the CS / DOD mods. Big leg-up to online gaming imo.

**Sims ** - was just that much different.

Dune - the original on 286’s. Corking strat game for the time.

Civilisation - the first of the real “time chewers” and accessible to all.

**BF 1942 ** - it had planes and parachutes, tanks and lots of people running round like loons.

Populous - the original. Now that was good.

51

Descent. That was a great game. 3D movement. Mineshafts all over the place. Remote control missles. I spent many an hour at that one.

52

I agree with every single one of the games mentioned here, and I’ll add a couple of my own:

Their Finest Hour: The Battle Of Britain, 1940: An early one (1989) from Lucasfilm Games, and one of the very first Combat Flight Sims. It had a level of versimilitude unmatched until European Air War, nearly 10 years later, and had a couple of aircraft that almost never get any screen time in modern WWII flightsims (as flyable aircraft), namely the He-111 bomber and the Ju-87B Stuka.

Red Baron: One of the first (and still one of the best, IMO) WWI flight sims. It came after Knights Of The Sky (which managed to feel more like you were actually in WWI somehow), but is still fondly remembered today.

Tropico: Come on, who hasn’t secretly dreamed of being El Presidente of a Caribbean Banana Republic at some point?

FarCry: Sure, it has some technical issues, but if you could get it running properly, it absolutely blew the visuals of pretty much everything else out of the water- and it was a cracking game, too!

Command & Conquer I was never a Warcraft Fan, but C&C had it all- FMV, interesting personalities, cool units, and the whole RTS thing was still pretty new at the time.

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. There’s a reason this game is known as SMAC, besides the Acronym. Somehow, Sid combined everything that was right with Civ II and the add-ons with an Epic Space Opera, and threw in a lot of very deep intellectual and philosophical discussions on the very nature of what makes us human, and the possibilities of the far future.

Jagged Alliance 2: A Tactical RPG with a wry sense of humour, characters you actually genuinely liked and cared about (or disliked and hated), combined with lots of guns, shooting, and a surprisingly deep strategic element.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura: If you loved Fallout, chances are you’ll like Arcanum as well. Set in a cross between Victorian England and The Forgotten Realms from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it had everything that made Falllout rule, plus it was bigger and arguably more in-depth.

Theme Park: The original, and the best, until Chris Sawyer ripped it off for Rollercoaster Tycoon. I’m still trying to work out how he didn’t get sued over that.

53

The best is freeciv.

It is like civ2, but without the annoying micromanagement, and in addition it works as an online multiplayer game.

You can get it for free at:
www.freeciv.org

54

How far can we go back?

Zork I-III, the text adventure games

SimCity and MS Flight Simulator; I’m always the first to get each update. Plus, I’m weird, as I love the more current version over the past one(s).

55

First, I must comment on other people’s picks.

There’s a reason the Warcraft-style RTS interface has become the standard - C&C’s sucked. The build queue system was especially bizarre and frustrating. C&C may have kickstarted the RTS genre, but recently I was a tester on the new compilation DVD that includes every C&C game, and I hated the oldest ones. It didn’t get tolerable until Tiberian Sun, and you’ll notice that Generals uses the modern interface descended from Warcraft.

On the other hand, I’m very pleased to see Total Annihilation on the OP’s list. While TA never had the mass appeal of some other RTSes, it was fairly popular in its day and I think one of the finest RTSes ever made. Units had truly long range power, in some cases reaching clear across the map. You could also set units’ movement and attack AI to several different behaviors. The 3D physics engine allowed for choke points and cover created by terrain and wreckage. Firing from higher ground also gave an advantage. The interface let you queue just about every action in the game, making it easier to set up long term strategies without all the button mashing. On top of all that, when Cavedog was still in business they had a server called the Boneyard, with a persistent galaxy that players could fight over and gain rank. Higher ranked players could command more elite units with beefed up stats. I think I made it to 2nd Lieutenant on the CORE side, who were the “bad guys”, generally somewhat slower and tougher than the ARM rebels. Finally, TA is really about the only RTS I can think of that’s fully moddable. There are reportedly about 6,000 custom units out there, and a number of full conversions.

I’m drooling over Supreme Commander, the unofficial sequel to TA by the same creator, Chris Taylor. PC Gamer asked him recently what he hopes to bring to the RTS genre with his new game. He replied, “Strategy.” Strategy in the classical sense has only truly been represented in turn based games like Civ, where you have to think and plan in long term and global scales. Most RTSes, even TA (unless you include the defunct Boneyard), are more properly tactical games where you’re only concerned with the demands of an individual battlefield. Battle for Middle Earth II tried to incorporate a strategic map, except they got it backwards and called it the tactical map and it was poorly implemented besides. If Taylor manages to pull it off with Supreme Commander, you will finally have a true Real Time Strategy where you can sit back and command the global theater of war, or zoom in and direct individual skirmishes, or anything in between. The screenshots and movies released so far show units on a realistic scale, with infantry and small vehicles all the way up to warships that are hundreds of meters long and take up more than a full screen until you zoom out. Of course, it could come out a horrible mess, but I don’t think this one will.

Homeworld is pretty cool too. There aren’t too many space based RTSes out there, but Relic came up with a great interface for handling true 3D space combat. Plus it has a soundtrack by Yes and a bunch of science fiction references sprinkled about. Homeworld is also highly moddable, but not quite to the same extent as TA.

As for the Civ series, I would currently rank them as II, IV, I, and III. Civ I was the innovator and very good, but I think II was superior in all respects while taking nothing away. III added some cool concepts like culture and national boundaries, but the new resource system was a bit screwy and the combat mechanics backslid into the “Phalanx defeats Battleship” situation of the original game. Civ II fixed that crap, I don’t know what they were thinking for III. IV took III and transformed it from a mediocre into a good game, but as of yet it still hasn’t captured hundreds of hours of my life the way that Civ I and especially II did.

So here’s my picks for top games:

  1. Fallout (I’ve gone on about that plenty of times in other threads)
  2. Civ II
  3. Total Annihilation
  4. TIE Fighter
  5. Knights of the Old Republic
  6. Homeworld
  7. Civ I
  8. Fallout II (I thought the ending was much weaker than the original)
  9. Warcraft II (orcs beat horrible Russian accents any day)
  10. Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (especially because it ran on my XT but could easily compete with games for 386 machines)
56

Sid Meyer’s Pirates was such a great game, I played it for years and on three different computers systems.
Warlords for the Amiga was incredible for its time.
Command & Conquer was quite a break through.
Star Fleet on the ancient Unix installs is one of the first computer games. Written sometime in the 70’s I think.
Neverhood by Lucas Arts.

Jim

57

“Elliot, you eeediot!”

<slap slap slap>
Ah, man, that was a classic. Wonder if it’ll run on XP?

58

Well, Dooku, I enabled my email, now tell me who you are.

59

Pool of Radience-which suffers because the old box game was best game ever
Civ3 every one gets better
Warcraft
Balders Gate 2 time consuming and challenging
Wolfenstein father of them all-graphics and weapons just improved
Sim City big fun
Rome total war
Age of Empires series that gets better
Final Fantasy keep on going
Links 386 at least you could putt this game

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