No wonder I was getting bored!

[Aynjell]

I can recall what I'd call my golden era of PC gaming, can any of you? In those days, I could buy a game and a PC that could run it, and by the time that game got old the amount of play time I had wrung out of that game had fully justified the cost of a PC. Thankfully during those days, I didn't pay for these things, my parents did. I was 12 at this time. I had an old pentium... I want to say a pentium II, and it was my portal to the battletech universe. The doorway was the installation disc to Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries!

Unfortunately, I don't foresee a sequel to this game in a while. I've sinced played Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries, and while it was a very rewarding experience, I'm not entirely sure it was out and out better than the entirety of Mechwarrior 2. I never did like the slot system but I agree it helped to give the omni-mech some kind of advantage. I remember back in the Mechwarrior 2 days, every mech was an omni mech, so the term had no meaning and no significanse. I recall wondering what it even meant. I've actually read the novellas and some of them were pretty good, especially D.R.T. (http://www.amazon.com/Battletech-14-D-R-T/dp/0451453662) and main event (http://www.amazon.com/Battletech-10-Main-Event/dp/0451452453/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235723518&sr=1-1). I loved this world, because you could be whomever you wanted to be, whether it be criminal or saint.

Before that though, there was the origional Command and Conquer: I loved this game and while I was no master I had pretty much gotten to the point where I could wax this game's ass with no effort. I loved that one final GDI mission where if you went all the way to the bottom right hand corner they had a poorly defended NOD factory. I played through both campaigns and one of the most memorable parts of the game was during a cutscene, you see a pistol's end come from the side of the screen and seth topples over dead after you hear a loud bang. Granted, the C&C universe was never a deep storyline. The demo to Red Alert 3 that I tried over my lunch break was just terrible story wise... women, women, and more women. While I like having fantasy elements, females in combat positions don't happen in our army, and I doubt any of them woudl be showing cleavage or wearing tube tops in combat zones. :\

Then the folks got a new PC and shortly after, I found Final Fantasy VII on PC at a used game store for like, 15$, and immediately had to have it. Unfortunately i t didn't run on our older computer due to what I suspect now was an video card that couldn't run the game. I remember crashes often enough, but this game was awesome. I became obsessed with the game, it's play time, how much there was to do, and the depth of the characters. I was so attached to it. This game actually became a huge part of my soul...

Have any of you ever started to play a game and enjoyed it so much that you thought about it at work, or at class, and couldn't wait to go home to continue playing it? This was Final Fantasy 7 when I was 12. Well, unfortunately at that age, I wasn't exactly a nice kid, nor was I a well behaved kid. I ended up in a group home at the age of 12, without ever finishing Final Fantasy 7. I didn't get out of that type of situation until I was 17. Somebody bequethed upon me, a PS1 for my own uses, and it didn't take long for me to figure out that ther ewas a PSX emulator for PC. I had purchased a copy of FF7 for PSX and used ePSXe to play it. I finally finished the game. After 5 years of that game being in my mind, and desperately wanting to play it, I finally got my chance 5 years later.

So I've begun to realize that I've been playing good games, yes, but very few of them have been the type of games I enjoy playing most. I'm going to be diving into some more RTS and RPG games, and really could use some suggestions. I'll be starting with DoW, and possibly moving to DoW2, but who knows if that's any good. I am sure I'll end up getting that first decade set of C&C, and playing through zero hour, generals, etc.

Any other suggestions for good RPG or RTS games I should be playing?

[Special7]

Only game in recent years that has sucked me in was Oblivion, I spent the better part of 2 years playing it pretty much everyday for 7+ hours. :p

[MARCI]

Honestly, I loved the Mechwarrior games, until I discovered tabletop (d20) rpgs. Provided you find a group with a Good GM running the campaign. a $30 dollar book, and a 7 dollar set of dice can get you entry into a game world that can last for years..

The group I play with has changed over the last decade or so, people move away, don't have time, and new people come in. I've played with the same core group for over a decade, and HATE it when RL interferes with game night.

[Atlehunekonge]

Hei,

I was completely addicted to the "Close Combat" series.
Very good games... In my opinion, the best rts ever....
As you said I was thinking about it day & night whenever not playing.

Close Combat 1
A Bridge Too Far
The Russian Front
Battle of the Bulge
Invasion Normandy

[Theocnoob]

Im not sure what you call a 'good game' but based on what kind of stuff you like check out:

Warhammer Online
Mass Effect
Dawn of War 1/2
World in Conflict

Welcome to the world of extreme graphics and minimum AI and substance.
Videogames in general and especially on PC have kind of gone a bit wonky in the last few years...

[gottcha]

Fall out 3 was pretty good for me. The story line was alittle on the short side but I still enjoy playing it even through i beat it. and they are coming out with more content for it to.

[Theocnoob]

Fall out 3 was pretty good for me. The story line was alittle on the short side but I still enjoy playing it even through i beat it. and they are coming out with more content for it to.

does it suffer from the same incompatabilities with multicore that dogged Oblivion-- since it uses the same engine-- or has this been solved?

What CPU hit are you getting when you run it?

[technoViking]

I was really addicted to Final Fantasy Tactics. A few years ago even after obessing over it for awhile when I was younger playing PS1, I got it on a PS1 emulator and started palying it again. Still enjoyed it!

For the PC, I lost a good amount of my child hood on Fallout 2 and Shadow Warrior (my first online game ever)

Recently I can't think of any games I"ve obessed over. It might be because of all the other real world stresses that come once you get older. When your young you probably only have a few things on your mind, games, women, and women.

[Alucard]

ahhhh Quake 2 on the mplayer community... (*touches self*)

[Theocnoob]

ahhhh Quake 2 on the mplayer community... (*touches self*)

Only an AMD person would do such a thing:clap:

[BenF]

recent games that have done that are the following: Guild Wars, Live for Speed (NOT NEED for speed, lfs is a small very realistic race sim), and any of the CoD games.

I never really thought about older games when I wasn't playing them even though I logged a lot of time on them.

As to new RTS games I've heard that empire total war is supposed to be pretty good when it comes out in a month or so. Maybe look into that?

[Aynjell]

recent games that have done that are the following: Guild Wars, Live for Speed (NOT NEED for speed, lfs is a small very realistic race sim), and any of the CoD games.

I never really thought about older games when I wasn't playing them even though I logged a lot of time on them.

As to new RTS games I've heard that empire total war is supposed to be pretty good when it comes out in a month or so. Maybe look into that?

Will do!

[kevlar93]

Steam is having a TF2 sale for $20 bucks. If they still have the sale you should get it. Amazing game.

[Neuromancer]

Mass Effect defintly, altohugh I think I still prefer the KOTR series (I was recommended Mass Effect after asking about something along the KOTR line)

(Knights of the Old Republic)

Oblivion was another good one, and neverwinter night (2 also) were great and I spent a LOT of time playing them


FPS are fun, I have upgraded to COD4 from 2, but its a game that always gets instaleld on my PC as well as Need For Speed Most Wanted. These are games that are great to just sit down and play for 20-30 minutes when you need a break from RL. The other games are evening/weekend suckers...

[SteveLord]

-CounterStrike. Was good at it and had a good group of friends that played with me. We used BattleCom back in the day.

-Guild Wars. Was deep into this for a year. Then many clansmen went into or back into WoW. Neverending major gameplay changes and skills turned me off as I couldn't keep up.

-Battlefield 2. Still play it regularly after going on and off since retail. Don't ever play it alone. Always with teammates. Try to win ladder matches, but the game is plagued with macro and script users with no support from EA or Punkbuster on them.

-Final Fantasy Tactics for GBA. Man this game made time fly by when I was deployed. I was able to put in a lot of hours a night whenever I had lonely nights guarding a desk. My time at completion was well over 40 hours put into it.

-Left 4 Dead. Love it now, despite some bugs related to its integration with Steam. I try and get 1 game in a night, but now I'm getting complaints from higher. ;-)

I agree that most PC games are stale. It seems like the new flavor is it throw in achievements or ranks on top of system straining graphics that aren't as good as you'd like em to be anyway.

[don'tknow]

Someone else actually played Shadow Warrior? Oh.

I still remember that game, it was actually 'high tech' for its time, also one of the first over the top funny and idiotic FPS games made. The neighborhood I lived in back then sucked, my 'friends' didn't like PC games so I went on with the mindset that it was one of those 'overlooked gems' of old days.

[TheGreySpectre]

I really liked mass effect.

[gottcha]

does it suffer from the same incompatabilities with multicore that dogged Oblivion-- since it uses the same engine-- or has this been solved?

What CPU hit are you getting when you run it?

I'm not sure i never really checked how many cores it was using. It ran fine with the system in my sig, It did have a crashing problem but they had an update that fixed that.

[Alucard]

Only an AMD person would do such a thing:clap:

don't hate

[ps2cho]

I am nostalgic for the days of counterstrike and warcraft III ladder play. They are both now not as popular as they used to be.

[Codeman05]

lets see...In chronological order.
1) Wing Commander
2) Doom
3) System Shock
4) StarCraft (still play this from time to time)
5) Counter Strike (Downloaded Beta 1.0 the day of release, been playing since...less lately)
6) Unreal Tournament 2004

Current: L4D for Multiplayer | Fallout 3 for Single Player


Someone else actually played Shadow Warrior?
Heck ya, Shadow Warrier & Duke Nuken 3D were some good time wasters back in the day. Great one liners lol.

[Red_LightRanger]

BF2

[Aynjell]

lets see...In chronological order.
1) Wing Commander
2) Doom
3) System Shock
4) StarCraft (still play this from time to time)
5) Counter Strike (Downloaded Beta 1.0 the day of release, been playing since...less lately)
6) Unreal Tournament 2004

Current: L4D for Multiplayer | Fallout 3 for Single Player



Heck ya, Shadow Warrier & Duke Nuken 3D were some good time wasters back in the day. Great one liners lol.

Fallout 3 is my single player game of choice, but I'm looking to clean up some of my back catalogue, working on stalker right now, next is mass effect, and after that, dark athena should be out, and I'll be playing that instead of sleeping, I'll bet.

[Theocnoob]

BF2

Douchebag EA and Punkbuster have been giving me a headache with this lately... still overall the best game of its type IMO. 9/10

Also Mass effect was super fun

[DarkVirusVx]

Golden age of gaming ended when the story took a back seat the graphic.

As a big fan of Fallout 1 and 2 I couldn't wait for fallout three. I was at gamespots midnight sale even though I pre-ordered on amazon to get the pipboy alarm and bobble head.

At first the game was great. The game play was fun and fleshing, and the post nuclear world in 3d was great. As the game goes on it becomes repetitive, the wasteland looks the same and the main story was as short as Oblivion.

The only pc rpg i can recommend at this time is mass effect. A great story with good graphics and game play.

[Jawsome]

I pretty much feel the same about Final Fantasy 7, one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. Also I played Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries at a friends place and became immediately addicted, it was the first game I bought when I got my first computer back in the day. Also another game I was into, not sure if anyone else has played it, was called Warzone 2100. I believe it was the first 3d RTS. I played it on mplayer for a year, year and a half.

[zexmarquies01]

-Final Fantasy Tactics for GBA. Man this game made time fly by when I was deployed. I was able to put in a lot of hours a night whenever I had lonely nights guarding a desk. My time at completion was well over 40 hours put into it.


Personally, I HATED FFT-A, and FFT-A2. ( Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced ). I hated the Rule system where you get penalized for using certain type of attacks or weapons.

But this is coming from a huge FFT fan.

~back on topic~

I'm pretty much the same. FF7 is my favorite game of all. I remember when I rented the game, and I rented it one disc at a time, because the video rental store was ( and still is ) owned by a family ( sadly, They sold it to a different family ), And the owner's wife was on Disc two when i went in to rent it. I said screw it, and grabbed it. Fell in love with it instantly. Luckily, by the time i got to the 2nd disc, she beat the game, allowing me to take home the last 2 discs at once.

But recently, I have been having trouble finding games with a good story, and good characters, with a combat system that doesn't bore the sh*t out of you within 2 hours.

As mentioned by Neur0mancer, KotoR ( Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic ) is also one of the greatest games I have played in a long time. When I rented it when it first came out, I stayed up and played it for 36 hours STRAIGHT. That is still my longest single gaming session thus far. The story is AMAZING, the combat is fun. And, I love star wars. So this adds quite a bit of story to the star wars universe.

KotoR 2 was great as well, but not quite as good as #1. simply because the story wasn't quite as good as #1's story. Not to say #2's story is bad. But it's just really really hard to top #1's story.

For other suggestions...

FF8 has also been released on PC. Might be able to find it floating around somewhere. But be warned, if you are running Vista...there is a very slim chance it will run. But if you can find it on PS1, you can just run the disc from an emulator.

Another great Tactical RPG for the PS1 was Vandal Hearts. BRILLIANT game! It's not as deep, and confusing as Final Fantasy Tactics, but it has a full cast of characters, giving the game more characters to think about, Unlike FFT which gives you one main character, and a second character that you don't see through half the game. And while it's not as deep as FFT, that in no way takes anything away from this game. It's the good kind of simple. There's no special gimmicks, or overly complicated combat. Just good game mechanics, and a great story. If you have not tried this game, and you like Tactical RPG's ( such as FFT ), then give this a try. Even if you aren't a huge fan of tactical RPG's, This is a GREAT game, because of its simplicity, and great story, almost anyone who's a fan of traditional RPG's can easily get into it.

Mass Effect is fun, But the story wasn't *THAT* epic to me, as all the hype made it out to be. That, and the side quests felt the same. All the extra planets that you could explore felt exactly the same, and other than extra EXP for levels, and a few items here and there. But other than that, it feels like these extra side quests were just tacked on, so they could boast a long play-time.

If you have a Gamecube or a Wii, I HIGHLY suggest picking up Tales of Symphonia ( #1, not #2, which isn't as good as #1 ). Oni will back me up on this. It's a BRILLIANT game. and trust me, this game can easily push you past the 100 hours play time. And the side quests are GOOD! and they actually yield USEFUL results! they don't feel tacked on.

If you have a 360, pick up Tales of Vesperia. It's a VERY fun game, and can easily be addicting.

Yeah, I know i mostly talked about Console RPG's, but thats simply because there's not that many great RPG's on the PC. And the RPG's that are on the PC tend to be the Oblivion/Fable style. And personally, I'm more of a fan of the JRPG's ( aka: Traditional Japanese turn based RPG's ).

[SteveLord]

Yeah, the decline of good RPGs with stories that keep you looking forward to playing and characters that you believe in......played a big part in other stuff becoming more stale.

[Springbok]

Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic are both demonstrations of the what a good RPG should strive for IMO. They both felt like there was this bigger story going on, loved the characters in both, and the character creation felt satisfying.

Oblivion & Fallout 3 have a lot of gameplay, I spent about 100 hours on the former and 50 on the latter. I found Fallout 3 to have a better story, better combat, and more memorable characters. Still, Oblivion delivers a fun fantasy realm if swords and elves are your preference. The main character in both games is very much a blank-slate, and the combat is in first person which makes it feel like you're really standing in the game world.

[Aynjell]

I just bought the command & conquer first decade package. It was a hell of a nice time seeing the origional command and conquer on my PC.

[don'tknow]

Yep FF7 is also one of my favorite games even now. Same for FF6 and FF4. Still got the original black label FF7 on PS1 and the PC version, both kept in very good condition. FF8 also came out for PC, but after playing the demo I didn't like how it had absolutely no improvement, the 2D backgrounds were very blurry, so I didn't buy it. FF7 wasn't much improved either (other than the resolution) but I was too fanatical to not buy it.

Back when the Doom series and Dune2, C&C etc. were coming out, up until around 2000 - 2004, was probably the pinnacle of PC gaming. Games like Heretic, C&C sequels, Quake coming out were something huge, and not just 'overhyped garbage' like many things are nowadays. I didn't have my own PC until the mid 90's though. UT99 and Diablo2 were probably my most played PC games, until WoW (but I quit that and don't want to play any more mmorpg's).

Those days were fun. Then, Microsoft happened.

[Aztroth]

I just bought the command & conquer first decade package. It was a hell of a nice time seeing the origional command and conquer on my PC.

its just not the same as the original with the Covert Ops expansion pack. Apparently, they "patched" a few things in that version that just made the game not feel as fun any more. I can still spend hours playing that game (the Original DOS version with the original expansion for it. And no I wont sell it. You'd have to kill me for it.)

[Aynjell]

its just not the same as the original with the Covert Ops expansion pack. Apparently, they "patched" a few things in that version that just made the game not feel as fun any more. I can still spend hours playing that game (the Original DOS version with the original expansion for it. And no I wont sell it. You'd have to kill me for it.)

Considering it's been nigh on 12 years since I played it, I can't see the difference, and at this point I don't even care. Between the dawn of war pack I bought, the copy of lost planet I got for 5$, and the C&C first decade box I got, I'll be busy for a while. And I still need to play FC2, and Stalker (which I also got for 5$ on another fricken sweet steam weekend).

Now, if only they'd hurry up and put Assassin's Creed on offer.

[jcw122]

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

I've been playing it since 2004, and I still love it :)

And yeah when I played more than I do now, I would think about it ALOT haha. Damn I love computer games. Only reason I play it less is because I'm at college and my sig computer is at home! Noooooo!

[x30Jx]

Those days were fun. Then, Microsoft happened.

PWN

[Lord_of_Decay]

The best so far is actual tabletop RPG's. Played several but my favorites are: AD&D, Rifts, Robotech, Vampire, and Battlelords to name a few.
Then I discovered Games Workshop and got into Warhammer and Warhammer 40K.

Then came PC games. Loved the Wing Commander series, KOTOR 1&2, Mechwarrior series, Total Annihilation, Unreal Tournament.
Played EQ, Planetside, and SWG for years and currently have been playing EQ2 since release. Looking at trying Warhammer online.

Most recent purchase was DoW2 which I find enjoyable.

[Twigglish]

-Final Fantasy Tactics for GBA. Man this game made time fly by when I was deployed. I was able to put in a lot of hours a night whenever I had lonely nights guarding a desk. My time at completion was well over 40 hours put into it.



That is the exact situation I'm in now. Well, there is no desk, but anytime I'm on duty and waiting around, that's what I reach for.

[Douken]

Hei,

I was completely addicted to the "Close Combat" series.
Very good games... In my opinion, the best rts ever....
As you said I was thinking about it day & night whenever not playing.

Close Combat 1
A Bridge Too Far
The Russian Front
Battle of the Bulge
Invasion Normandy

Close Combat +1 was looking for that game the other day, it was my first RTS, and I can say one of the best I've played