PC games to check out

[Assassinscreed548]

So, lately I've been using up the time I spend on the internet browsing sites, reading up on news, checking out some funny videos, the usual. Sometimes, however I remember the days when I always had something to play, when I could sit down and enjoy a game for hours without having a care in the world. So, I ask you, fellow Escapists, are there any cool and awesome PC games you can recommend that wouldn't be the obvious choices of the Fallout, TES, Dragon Age or mass Effect series? Got nothing against 'em, in fact I've pretty much played through all of them. Graphics don't matter, as long as the mechanics aren't too rusty.

 

[Thaluikhain]

"Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines"...though you need various mods and patches to get it to work ok. Made of win.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

How much more do you need?

Ok

 

[Assassinscreed548]

"Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines"...though you need various mods and patches to get it to work ok. Made of win.

That game sure is good, man.. really nice and immersive, just a great RPG experience.

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

thaluikhain is right but If you enjoy an RPG with Turn-based-Strategy you could try out Grotesque Tactics - Evil Heros which is full of good satirical mocking of the usual sterotyps fun.

 

[flyhawk]

homeworld 2 or maybe some indie games?

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

"Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines"...though you need various mods and patches to get it to work ok. Made of win.

That game sure is good, man.. really nice and immersive, just a great RPG experience.

I can third that; the game really has a great atmosphere, excellent characters and a good story. It's also quite fun for video game sight-seeing; come one, come all, see the single most obnoxious sewer level in the history of obnoxious sewer levels!

 

[KrayZekrow]

homeworld 2 or maybe some indie games?

Indie games like Terraria? I've been having a little too much fun with that one recently.

 

[Ickorus]

Minecraft, if you don't want to build stuff you can go download an adventure map and there is pretty much always a new one to play.

 

[flyhawk]

homeworld 2 or maybe some indie games?

Indie games like Terraria? I've been having a little too much fun with that one recently.

or King Arthur bounty or bastion or minecraft or plenty more (check steam)

 

[Bostur]

homeworld 2 or maybe some indie games?

Indie games like Terraria? I've been having a little too much fun with that one recently.

Oh dear, stay away from that. You'll need to be surgically removed from your PC if you start playing it. Just kidding of course, the indy scene seems vibrant at the moment and Terraria is an excellent time waster.

Take a look at www.gog.com they have excellent offers on aged games, maybe you missed something good.

Another option is to take up the hobby as an MMO hobo. Most MMOs have free trials or some free content these days. There can be a lot of fun in trying out some of the obscure releases, and maybe you'll even like some of them enough to play regularly. Massively can be a good place to start.
http://massively.joystiq.com/

Some specific games that I can reccomend, some are aging a bit but usually available pretty cheap:

Sid Meier's Pirates!
http://www.sidmeierspirates.com/
A remake of a very old but timeless classic.

Dead Space
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Space_%28video_game%29
Action/Horror shooter. Usually not my prefered genre but this is pretty well done. Stay well clear of the sequel though.

The Witcher series.
http://www.thewitcher.com/
I only played the Sequel and thought it was great. I hear the first one is pretty good as well. The sequel does have some pretty annoying quick time events, I can look past that particular flaw but some people hate them.

Space Marine
http://www.spacemarine.com/
Admittedly another action game, we are drowning in those. This one has some really good combat and feels exactly like a WH40K game should. If you like GW settings you may like it. Otherwise you would probably find it silly and shallow.

Railroad Tycoon 2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Tycoon_II
An old remake of an even older Sid Meier Classic. One of the best economic sims and pretty easy to get into. And it has little trains. If you like Sim type games with well balanced economic gameplay, this is actually one of the best bets. It looks aged for sure but the gameplay is solid.
It's available on steam. There's a third one as well, but according to Steam it doesn't work on Vista or Windows 7.

Monkey Island series
http://store.steampowered.com/app/32360/
One of the best series of adventures made by Lucasarts. If you missed these when they were released you may be pleasantly surprised. It's a gameplay genre that doesn't exist anymore and it may be a bit tricky to get into the idea, but if you do you may get hooked for life on adventures.

 

[])rStrangelove]

No One Lives Forever 2, Swat4, Rainbow6 - Ravenshield, GTA4 & Missions, AssCreed 2 & Brotherhood + Revelations out in December, Batman: Arkham Asylum & Arkham City, BF: BC2, BF3

 

[Bostur]

Your other suggestions were fine, but these three? How can you pick any three games that are More mainstream? I suppose CoD might count--

Games I suggest... I wouldn't suggest Dwarf Fortress because it's really not a very good game in practice... Hitman 2, Rainbow Six 3, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, GTA San Andreas, Crysis 1 (a bit main stream, but that masterpiece doesn't get the credit it deserves - best shooter since Halo:CE), Halo CE, or you might like an emulator that lets you play Golden Sun, or some such.

I tried to make a bit of a mix, something mainstream and something not as mainstream. The OP didn't really specify his preferences. And if he didn't play them I'd say they are quality titles, even though they aren't exactly revolutionary.

Some excellent suggestions by you as well. GTA SA is probably the best game of the series. The others are classics for a good reason.



Edit: When we get an upside down captcha are we supposed to spell it backwards? Also it feels weird to have accents in the captcha when the field doesn't accept them properly. 'Señor' turns out 'Se~nor' in the text field.

 

[Thaluikhain]

"Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines"...though you need various mods and patches to get it to work ok. Made of win.

That game sure is good, man.. really nice and immersive, just a great RPG experience.

I can third that; the game really has a great atmosphere, excellent characters and a good story. It's also quite fun for video game sight-seeing; come one, come all, see the single most obnoxious sewer level in the history of obnoxious sewer levels!

Heh, I know what you mean. Until you find the two doors that let you pop out and come back in again later, so much better when you know you can put it on hold, as it were.

 

[Legendsmith]

I reckon if you enjoy strategy games, Star Ruler is worth a look. It's a Real Time Strategy/4X hybrid that, to me, has the following attractions:

Scalability: You can play with a 2 system galaxy for a quick and brutal fight, or a 10000+ system galaxy for a long, epic game.

Customisability: Most ships you're going to be using will be designed by yourself. The ship design system is quite good. you're not just swapping out weapons on hardpoints, you're designing ships almost completely from scratch. You place subsystems, including life support, crew quarters, bridge, power generator, engines, etc on a grid to your liking. Where you place a subsystem matters. Got a big gun at the front? It'll be taking hits first, so you better put a reinforced bulkhead on it. armour however, is spread homogeneously.
There's a wide range of weapons and utility subsystems to research too. See your enemy using missiles? Research reactive armour. They using reactive armour on your missiles? whip out beams or rapid fire smaller weapons.You can also steal enemies designs by analyzing their wrecks.Oh, and ships can be as big as you want (and have resources for). [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJJEMmzKzR4]
On that note, bigger isn't always better. A big ship designed to kill big ships won't be able to deal with a swarm of smaller ships, and a swarm of smaller ships will get massacred by a ship designed to kill smaller ships, but it won't do too well against a ship its own size.

Depth: Every planet has its own economy. It's not super deep on a single planet scale, but it's there, and when you consider that there's multiple planets per system and that there can be tens to hundreds of systems, it gets pretty good. Find your enemy's farm planets? Take them out to starve his empire. Find his metal mining system? Take it out to cripple his economy, or chemical bomb it to kill the population, then take the planet, with its structures for yourself.

Thing is, micromanaging is pretty easy, Unlike other games, building on a large scale, or revamping your economy on a large scale isn't that hard. You can group planets and systems together to give them orders en-masse. There's a 'pinning' system that allows you to quickly switch and zoom between important things, be it a fleet, a single ship or an entire system.
Similarly, you can add minimaps for specific systems, so you can always keep an eye on important systems.

There's also lots of mods and stuff.

 

[Layz92]

Baldur's Gate series, Icewind Dale series, Planescape: Torment. Those are always at the top of my list.

 

[Jandau]

So, good games on the PC, but a bit off the beaten AAA track? A few that come to mind, in no particular order:

Dawn of Discovery - City building sim, one of the best out there, pretty, complex but not too much, plays very well. A real timesink if you're into such games.

Tropico 3&4 - Another city building sim, only this time you're a dictator in a bana island republic. Good sense of humor, several viable styles of gameplay (ruthless VS benevolent, tourism VS industry VS farming, etc.).

King Arthur: The Role Playing Wargame - You ever play a Total War game? It's like that, only set in Dark Ages England, with a fair bit of fantasy thrown into the mix. Also, the plot plays out like a choose your own adventure and your Knights are full-on RPG characters with spells and skills.

Dungeons - Spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper. You build a dungeon, populate it with monsters and treasure, fighting against invading heroes and other dungeon lords. The twist is you have to keep the heroes alive for a time, let them win some fights and get some treasure so they fatten up on Spirit Energy (game's currency) so that when you finally take them down, you get more out of them. Kinda like fattening pigs before the slaughter.

Cursed Crusade - Just came out. Third person Hack&Slash, revolves around a buddy-cop-style story about a young Crusader and a Spanish Outlaw, who set out to join a crusade to discover the secret of the curse on their families that has death himself trying to take them. Solid combat, cool protagonists. I'm having quite a bit of fun with it.

Galactic Civilizations 2 - Maybe not quite as obscure as some of the other titles I listed, but it's essentially the best space empire sim ever made. Period. A brilliant turn based strategy that anyone with even a slight interest in the genre should play.

Orcs Must Die! - A recent tower defense/hack&slash hybrid. You play a young mage who has to defend a series of castles from hordes of Orcs. You get to kill hundreds of the green bastards with traps, spells and weapons. Crushing them, burning them, mashing them, bashing them. Tossing them into lava. Or acid. Or into giant grinding machines. The list goes on. Good sense of humor and amazingly fun gameplay.

Lionheart: The King's Crusade - From the people who did the aforementioned King Arthur, an RTS set in the Crusades, with a decent share of RPG elements as you build up and customize your crusading army or saracen horde.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth - A reverse tower defense game. Instead of building towers to fight back the invaders, it's the invaders who are taking over the planet and building towers, while you need to guide your troops safely through them. A cool concept, well executed.

King's Bounty: Crossworlds (or The Legend) - An RPG/Tactics game, basically plays like Heroes of Might and Magic games, only without other players.

There, these come to mind and I claim they are either good or at least not bad. None of them are particularly mainstream or AAA games, but generally have solid production values and good quality.

 

[Qitz]

cthulhu saves the world / Breath of Death VII - Such a great game. If your into old school 8Bit RPGs with some great humor check it out. Plus, together, their only like $2.

Bioshock / Bioshock 2 - It's bioshock, it's fun.

Borderlands - Even if you play it singleplayer it's still great fun.

Terraria - Crafting items, killing dungeon bosses and finding weapons that can fire stars? Epic.

Jade Empire - Basically KOTOR in China, still damn fun though. Plus you can turn into a giant poison toad.

Star Wars Republic Commando can be pretty entertaining as well.

Just poke around Steam every so often, your bound to find something for cheap.

 

[Blunderboy]

So many great suggestions already.
It's also worth picking up any of the Total War games. Just pick a historical era that interests you and get the appropriate game.

I?d also suggest Mount & Blade Warband/With Fire and Sword.