two rpg type games that you can check out first before buying this first one is more old school called "Eschalon book I" by Basilisk games web site here http://basiliskgames.com/ the second game can be played online multiplayer or single player off line is called "Minions of Mirth" by prairie games found here http://minions.prairiegames.com/trac/mom. If you like puzzle games here is one with a story line called" puzzle quest challenge of the warlords" by the publisher www.d3publisher.us PC version can be hard to find.AS of late for my stategy turn based gaming stardock has been getting my money

My recommendation for you, for a real challenge is Space Empires V with DevnullMod activated

GalCiv 2 and Sins of a Solar Empire, of course!

Pretty much anything made by Valve as well. Portal is great, although a centralized place for custom map ratings is hard to find . I've also got all of the Command & Conquer games, as well as the entire Myst series, although Myst can be too much of a thinking game for some people.

Civ games also are high on my list, as well as Homeworld and Homeworld 2. I like strategy and puzzle games.

If you love those two...the original 'Half Life' is awesome.

Also, I'm having a blast with Quake Wars. And I love Sins of a Solar Empire, but that sounds like it might not be your cup of tea. You like Toal Anihilation, have you tried Supreme Commander?


thelordofruins

I'm back after enjoying my lazy long weekend!

I finished the campaign for Gallactic Assault which was brilliant. After that i tried the scinarios but I did not particularly like those.

The deathmatches are a bit 'live and let die'... as in there is no time or resources for playing around with strategy and experimentation - you just get to run over and kill them or be killed yourself. After a few rounds of that, i got bored with it.

Final Verdict - No customizable single player games in Gallactic Assault, so once your done with the campaign that is the end of it, the game is of no further use!


I have read through all the interesting posts, there is allot to consider! I will comment as i get time.

col80 -

Alpha Centauri must be the most hated game around by strategy game companies today - Every time i see some moderator on a forum explaining why something cannot be done in their game, i always know their full of sh-t because it was already done in Alpha Centauri!!

I did not like Star trek Amada. I paid $80.00 Australian dollars for the game and it was a dud. I found i could not shoot enemy ships, and no matter how much i tried to get my ship to fire, it was no use at all. This would be the first time ever i have played a game and not been able to at least fire a weapon! So i then did what i always do with new games when i get stuck.... i read the help files and the manuel. I was stunned to find such an important aspect of the game (targeting and shooting) was not explained coherently in the manual (so much for Vulcan logic!). So i threw the game in the crap pile in disgust after that. And i have since remained very careful to never buy any Startrek games.

I might try that Mount and Blade when i get a chance!

General Homsar -

So your a Galciv fan? Tried Sins of the Solar Empire yet? I got a spam email from Stardock on that game, i looked at it but it does not seem to give a very detailed run down on what the game is. So based on the limited information Stardock has released on it, i will be reluctant to buy it.

What is "Shadow of the Colossus" ?

Droom1 -

Probably not my thing. Although i never played Doom1. Is it anything like Quake1?

I am not really into shooting games because i already have Unreal Tournament, nothing further is needed!

It is easy to understand what adventure games i will like... there are just two things it needs;

1)team campaign. Going on an adventure with your freind (or in my case wife) at your side, makes the game 100x more fun. I won't bother with an adventure game that does not have this feature,,, possibly why i have never bothered playing Doom1?

2)Not having to buy the game twice to play it with my wife at home, PURE GENIOUS!

I will tip my hat to Quake1, Dungeonsiege 2 and Lionheart for quallifying on these two points!

Freelancer
X3
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
Thief 1 & 2
C&C
Starcraft
Sins
Supreme Commander
Rainbow Six
Hitman 1, 2, 3, & 4
Silent Hunter
The Witcher
The Elder Scrolls 1, 2, 3, & 4
Deus Ex (I hpoe they do a good job on the third one!)
Neverwinter Nights
Gothic 1 & 2
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2

Just a few of my favorites...

Jythier -
I havn't heard of 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms'?

Lords of the Realm 2 i found to be quite addictive for a relatively primative game. I also bought Lords of the Realm 3 but i never played it, i just looked at it and thought "wtf is this??" uninstalled it and forgot about it.

I hate Sim City or any other such games that let you do all that work building an empire and then do not give you an army to go and kill stuff!!!

Thanks for the info Ogremech and Guardamar

CobraA1 -

Yes i love Galciv. But i HATE command and conquer! My wife told me Command and Conquer was a good game she would love to play with me so i went and bought it. Installed it on our two computers at home and tried to play a LAN game... nope, need to buy the game twice!!! GHHHNNNGGG HAAAATE Command and conquer, the developers of that game are definately on my mortal enemies list now!

I played Homeworld, it was ok, the game has a unique set up but it is a bit difficult to controll all your units. I think it definately needed unit automation commands to retreat on the basis of low fuel and or damage. It was just too difficult to run around holding all the units hands, this is what put me off the game.

thelordofruins -

I am thinking of getting sins of the solar empire.

Also i had condidered getting supreme commander. I looked at it in the shop but for some reason i did not buy it. Perhaps because i was already occupied with another game at home, i dunno?

Can i ask, does Supreme commander allow a LAN game between two computers with the 1 game disk?

Most of the best games ever have already been listed. Here are a few more worthy of mention:

Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition
UFO Alien Invasion (free, open source version of UFO: Defense; download at: http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/)

And you've been playing games for what, 4 years?

SIN? Are you serious? Even Portal is something of a joke. It was a good game, but it wasn't epic in any way, shape, or form. It was about as fulfilling as a really good flash game. Certainly praiseworthy, I suppose, but it has no business being considered one of the 'best games'.

That said, if you haven't played at least half of these games, you're pathetic and have no business calling yourself a gamer.

you are the man. 100000% agree with you on those. I have played them all and loved them, cept for xcom and grim fandango never played them but heard nothing but goodness about them. I was about to reply after the first page and say "Wth, how has no one mentioned Planescape:Torment or any of the fallout games?" but i went to the second page and saw your post, you pretty much covered it lol. Notice how all the GREAT games are part of a series that is really not developed anymore? Ah but I have to add two to your list that wasnt there.

Wizardry 8
Might and Magic 9

I love old school RPG's and those are probably the two best imho. some people argue MM9 wasnt as good as 6-8, but i think it was better, especially the interface. Oh and Vampire the Masquerade : Bloodlines. Awesome RPS thats getting popular again for some reason....

i think im going to play wizardry 8 now hah its so good, especially the choices in character developement.

Oh yeah, and Dark Reign. Not Dark Reign 2 that was crap. Its an old RTS made by activision that seriously, if you ever played it, so much better than C&C, TA, or Age of Empires. The game had real story and atmosphere to it, and it was one of the few games that had a seriously awesome game manual they put alot of detail into. It didnt get to big because for some reason activision didnt put alot of advertisement money into it, but anyone I know that played it absolutely loved it. For the time of course. If you can find a copy I say get it just to have it. its a gem.


-------------edit

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/darkreign/index.html?tag=result;title;1

go there. look at screenshots. they're oozing with atmosphere! 9.2 review, great review too. too bad activision went down the shitter awhile ago and hasnt made any good games.

-------final edit

I just realized Dark Reign laid the groundwork to some of your favorite RTS features, such as production queing and rally points. Bet ya didnt know that? Pay homeage to your ancestors and respect this little known game that advanced the series more than your know!!!

Bah, couldn't squeeze these three in. Honorable mention to Max Payne 1, because without it, Max Payne 2 makes NO sense at all.

Gaaaah forgot all about that one. I KNEW it, because I was playing through it again recently, but I'll be damned if I could remember it (and I was too lazy to go grab my external hard drive and look). Fie on me.

Therefore, I give you V:TM:B, and another classic great. Sadly, it's not too playable, unless someone's finally fixed the massive engine bugs with XP in it.






And if it should be mentioned / asked, of the isometric RPG games (Baldur's Gate, Fallout), if you only have time to play one, play Planescape. It's by far and large the best of any of them, and I daresay it may be one of the best games ever made. Were I to chose the second best game, it'd be a close tie with Deus Ex. Both these games have an utterly, ridiculously, incomprehensibly awesome story driving them, with near-flawless presentation and gameplay.

One of my biggest pet-peeves is when people talk about the 'best games' and mention NEW games. Frankly, and I'll have to examine my list, I think no one has ANY business calling a game one of the best without letting it mature. There are certain games I think in the future may be amongst them, but there's too much 'newness' to them. People get starry-eyed by a game and call it great. Well great it may be, but it's the LASTING IMPRESSION of a game that determines its greatness. 8 years after Deus Ex, I still have it on my hard drive. Will I be playing The Witcher? That remains to be seen.

Then there's games like Starcraft, which I left absent from my lists. Why? Because Starcraft was, frankly, not a great game. Starcraft is POPULAR, but it is not GREAT. Likewise, rap music is popular, but great music it is NOT. Nobody I've ever met will argue that the talent (if you can call it that) behind Nelly is comparable at all to the talent behind Van Halen, or any other 'legendary' band. Starcraft was popular for a lot of reasons, a great many of which had nothing to do with the quality of the game itself. Custom Map Rules and Battle.Net alone contributed to most of its initial growth. Starcraft has reached a status similar to Super Mario Bros. - The game might be 'pretty good', but when people talk about it, there's external influences on it. Super Mario Bros. is considered a 'great game', because... why? Because for people of my generation, it was one of the first games they ever played. Does that make it a great game? No, it doesn't. Likewise, a great many people say Starcraft is great, and therefore people are more inclined to think so too. Starcraft did VERY LITTLE to improve the RTS genre. In fact, technologically and creatively, it was utterly outmatched both the year prior and after by Total Annihilation (for technology and innovation) and Homeworld (for story and gameplay) respectively.

Uranium - 235

I was getting worried for a moment, then i saw freespace 2 listed! Also you list Total Anihilation - brilliant game, i have had it for so many years now and i can still enjoy playing it! Homeworld i have played, a shame it does not have the same air unit automation as TA!! There is too much unit 'hand holding' needed in homeworld, that is what killed the game for me.

Out of all the others you listed, only Xcom looks interesting to me, what is that game?


Sradac -

Dark reign eh? i will have to check it out after reading your post! thanks


Uranium - 235 (last post)

I tend to agree with your philosophy on what is a great game. So going by the top games that i have played consistantly for the longest period of time, here would be the result.... Total Anihilation, Alpha Centauri Age of empires and Battlezone 2.

As it happens, Starcraft did not impress me all that much either! I did the human campaign and then got forced to play the enemy?? An intriguing idea but not my cup of tea so i had no interest in continuing on and never did to this day and never will either! So far as random maps etc, i would put Starcraft in the same category as warcraft (including later versions), both of which i have but i do not play because those games seem a little bit too difficult to controll which is a bit of a personal dislike on my part (hence my attitude to homeworld as well). I prefer games where i feel as though i am more in controll.

uranium, i'd throw in a few others certainly.

full throttle, monkey island 1-3, severance: blade of darkness, anachronox, psychonauts, the longest journey, dreamfall, icewind dale 1 and 2 (iwd2 is my favourite infinity engine game after planescape. i loved the villains), startopia... well and a fuckload of others.

thief, thief, thief. garrett for the epic, unadulterated win.

hell, stuff like eye of the beholder, another world, flashback, chaos overlords, simon the sorcerer 1 and 2, whatever. hard to get a hold off, short of torrents, but so very worth it.

definitely quake 1. the music by nine inch nails is worth it on its own.

also, fuck you, portal rocks. a game is entertainment. portal is entertaining to the max. to the max, i say, whot whot.

also, team fortress 2.

and for that old school e-penis, elite, wasteland and old x-wing and tie fighter games.

yeah, dark reign!

Starcraft's campaign was mind-numbing to me. It was just "Huge AI base. Kill it" over and over. Build your base. Blow up zerg. Repeat.

Hell even Command and Conquer which came out like 4 years prior had creative missions, and damn that game was HARD. "Here's a commando, and engineer, and two rocket troops. Go steal nukes."

Independence war 2
X3
GalCiv2 + expansions
Half-Life 2 is good but makes me motion sick for some reason.
Medieval 2 Total War
Civ 4

Nah, man, remember the infiltration missions? The freaking sweet science vessel Amerigo. The following cut scene was so badass for its time. There were plenty more. Besides the characters and the pretty neat storyline made the pitched battle missions bearable.

lockon
mtw2/rtw
silent hunter
il2 sturmovik
sose
dow
armed assault\operation flashpoint (the only real FPS)
homeworld2
nexus - the juptier incident
take command 2nd manassass
klingon academy
bf2 - project reality - the base game is BS
theatre of war - when they ever fix the damned thing
company of heroes
close combat cc1 - 5 - GJS - one of the best games ever made
mechwarrior mercenaries
heavy gear 2

oh and combat mission - which i have not had a chance to play much yet