Civ II would have to top my list. It used to be Civ I, but then II came out. I even tried doing my own mod, but I got bored after a while. My favorite feat was in a Prince level game. I was Japan, at war with France. We were the two superpowers, but France was about 3 times as big. I sent a large invasion force by sea, but lost a lot of it from land based cruise missile attacks. So I sent several transports full of Spies, way around the ass end of France to keep them out of range of the cruise missiles. Luckily there were no subs, and the peninsula I selected had no port cities. I expended many spies trying to sneak in and set off nukes, but I succeeded in hitting 3 cities, rebuilding the airports, and airlifting in masses of ground troops. From there I annexed about a third of France, but I never finished the game because each turn was taking 3 hours since we each had 200-300 units trying to kill each other.
Total Annihilation is a close second. I was very upset to discover that Cavedog was more or less defunct. I made Lieutenant ranking on the Galactic Wars lists. I challenge you Flash rush weenies to penetrate my LLTs ringed with Dragon’s Teeth. (OK, so maybe I lost games because I couldn’t build them fast enough. But it worked enough to make it worthwhile. Damn Flash tanks.) And if by some miracle I manage to build a Krogoth in time, look out! Not that I depended on that strategy of course.
Other games in no particular order:
SimCity and SimCity 2000. I never liked 3000 as much, but if you ask me why I’d have a hard time explaining. One thing is that it doesn’t include a terrain editor. I think my issue was that it very similar to 2000, but different enough to trip me up.
Fallout and Fallout 2. These games have come the closest I have seen to a true pen-and-paper RPG. (I play the White Wolf games, Mage mostly, but that’s another thread.) The atmosphere is just fantastic, and the rules are nice and clean. I’m going to buy Arcanum as soon as I can, largely because some of the Fallout guys are behind it.
Diablo I and II. I don’t know why people get these confused with RPGs, but I still like them. Sure, you can mess with your character’s ablilties a little, but most of the game is about delivering damage to demons. Simple but fun.
The Longest Journey. I was never into adventure games, but this one got Editor’s Choice at PC Games, a magazine that I feel knows it stuff. I played it with my fiancee, and we both loved it. Check it out.
Bad Mojo. Often annoying, but you played a cockroach. How cool is that?
Homeworld and HW: Cataclysm. I thought a 3D space warfare game would have been difficult to do well (I suppose it was, actually), but these games do it. The interface is extremely good, and doesn’t get in the way of the action. Very impressive.
All the X-Wing games. I think a good way to play these is to get a friend to act as your R2 and handle your shield recharge and stuff. My friend and I decided that in Tie Fighter, there should have been more levels to the Emperor’s secret order, whatever it was called. Emperor’s Genitalia, perhaps?
Star Control 1. When I was in high school we played this game against each other instead of writing our Pascal programs. My favorite was the Klingonish ship that could cloak.
On the Commodore 64:
There was a game called Demolition Derby I think, where you chose a car and raced around various goofy tracks while knocking your opponents around. There was a lunar track where jumps would send you sailing waaaaay up in the air, er, vacuum. You could edit the different cars and make your own tracks too.
I had a subscription to Compute! magazine (required reading for any Commodore 64 owner) and liked a lot of their games. One of my favorites was one called Spheroids, for 2 players. You moved your thingy (just a circle) around the arena, which consisted of various hills and pits, picking up balls and launching them at your opponent. Everything was deflected by the obstacles, which made for some interesting games.
