Every Gamer Should Play...

[Dog Pants]

The title is something of a misnomer. What I actually want to put to you lovely bummers is which games every serious PC gamer should play. Not necessarily for the enjoyment of it, but because you simply aren't experiencing the medium at its best if you don't. So the games aren't necessarily the best either, but those which define the platform. The one which got me thinking along these lines is Minecraft. Sure, it's available on other platforms now, but the PC is its home and it is certainly one of the defining games of the platform. In its short life it has begun to influence many other games across many other genres. Another I'd suggest is Dwarf Fortress, an example of complexity and detail taken to the extreme, driving stories almost entirely imagined by its players. COD4, while not a PC exclusive, had its roots in the format and drove character progression through challenges and unlocks in an FPS environment, which has been oft imitated on every platform since. Love or hate the MW series (and I'd speculate that most serious gamers fall into the latter category), it has certainly been influential. World of Warcraft, while not the first to do MMOs the way it has, has proven to be the vanguard of many staples, such as crafting and talent trees. Similarly, Eve has pioneered open world freedom in MMOs and proven how a player driven persistent world can thrive.

I want to write an article on this, especially since I've not written anything for months, but I'd like to round it out to an even ten if I can. Anyone any suggestions?

[Thompy]

The entire simulator genre? Flight sims especially. Generally the complex interfaces can't be used on consoles and the slow boring nature of them isn't something console users want. And even though The Sims is cross platform these days it originated on PC, which is presumably the still the best platform to play it on (I wouldn't know), and is the biggest PC franchise in history.

[Dog Pants]

I was trying to avoid including whole genres, because we might as well just list them off; FPS, RTS, MMONG etc. I believe MS Flight Sim was pretty influential within the genre though. Anyone well versed in sims?

[HereComesPete]

Some ideas -

half life series - pretty much a given because of the quality of the story telling and level of immersion. The first one was a revelation when it arrived, the story, the intro, the scientists, xen (eurgh) and smacking things with a crowbar. Then the second one arrived and it was shinier, the story was just as good and once again you were Gordon fucking Freeman saving the damn planet.

bioshock - just the first one. Utterly hatstand, amazing design and story telling and full of what the fuck moments and a rather nice twist.

Stalker shadow of Chernobyl a tad buggy but immersive, heavily moddable and pant shittingly scary in places. Although Call of Pripyat was possibly the best of the series, it moved away from some Clear Sky decisions back to Shoc but it was beautiful and scary and really bloody dark.

The Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim, so much depth and beautiful graphics - same as minecraft and others they are now cross-platform but their home is the PC.

Fallout series - more depth, amazing story telling and hours of play.

Baldurs Gate 2 - still the most complete and polished swords and sorcery RPG as far as I'm concerned.

Burnout paradise - I'm not a huge racing sim fan but this supplies speed, hilarity, fun and a huge world full of challenges.

Mass effect series - The epic story that unfolded in the first one was polished and improved for the second, such tragedy and loss and bouncing round the galaxy being a total badass, the third brought some damn difficult choices and a rather abrupt ending but as a series the most polished space rpg ever, bioware are rather good at these aren't they. Shame EA fucked them over with tor.

Hitman Silent Assassin, a shooter that makes you watch and wait and wait and wait some more and then deliver one perfect kill and ghost out the level. Or go screaming in and massacre everything that moves. So much choice, varied levels and targets and silent assassin is the best of the IP.

[Dog Pants]

Half Life and Bioshock are influential for the same reason - introducing a real story to the first person shooter. Bioshock had RPG elements too, but then it took that from System Shock. For that I'd argue Deus Ex is the poster child. Stalker is a good call, really hammering the open world survival horror thing. You could go wherever you wanted, but they'd kill the fuck out of you unless you had the right gear. Oblivion is another good call, promising so much open world freedom. It failed to deliver, in my opinion, as did Fallout 3 and Skyrim, but the idea was there and it's inspired others. The turn based Fallouts, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment. All good games and all part of the old RPG guard. Are they still relevant today do we think? Bumout is undoubtely a good game, but the game and genre was pioneered on the console. Similarly with Mass Effect, although that has the distinction of being the first crossover game I thought was done well. Hitman is another good call though. I don't like them, personally, but the plan and act approach has been taken and done well in other games - SWAT 4, Deus Ex HR, Ass Creed.

[buzzmong]

As people have already put down Deus Ex, System Shock II, Baldaur's Gate and Fallout 1&2 etc, I'll drop in the following:

UFO:Enemy Unknown (aka XCOM:UFO Defence). Gollup's turn based masterpiece from the early 90's.

Star Wars - TIE Fighter. While X-Wing was good, TIE Fighter is just sublime. Putting you in the flight suit of a bad guy, having cracking missions and importantly, a brilliant narrative. It's certainly one to play.

I'm on the fence about putting Mafia down as an essential game. Purely for it's story it's awesome and shows off just how to do a great story and tie it together with good characters, but the gameplay was never amazing. GTA:Vice City is probably also a must play.

[FatherJack]

Mass Effect and Burnout began as console exclusives, so don't so much define the PC platform.

At first the list of titles that sprang to my mind were quite similar to the "gaming made me" series on RPS, but actually I wouldn't recommend people play Doom or Descent - as influential to me as they were - as Pants' question was about what will showcase the platform in the best light, and those two would frustrate even me now.

Neither would I commend the Football Manager games, as they started on home computers even before the PC existed, and is essentially the same game with a data update - so much so that bugs still exist that have been in there for at least the last five years.

Deus Ex is an obvious choice - the way it threw a bunch of tools at you and let you decide how to do stuff has influenced many games since. It's a shame in some ways that the more modern games make it a little too easy to go the all-out-assault route, in Deus Ex it was usually a last resort and commonly fatal.

I'll think of some more in a minute, I bought Baldur's Gate 1&2 off GOG in the week and am playing it now with a bunch of bugfixes and updates, it still stands up pretty well so I'd say they're relevant, but some may be put off by the graphics - in which case they can play the arguably-lesser Neverwinter Nights series.

[Dog Pants]

I'd already considered TIE Fighter, it was certainly genre defying, but the genre has arguably died out. Same as with Planescape/BG etc. UFO is the same again, although the new XCOM has brought turn based tactical games back into the limelight (and will hopefully spawn some similar games). Another good call on open world GTA-style games. I never liked Mafia, other people did. GTAIII was the pioneer, but VC was better.

FJ has reminded me of my point though. I thought of a few games while I was dreaming this up, but I wouldn't recommend anyone went and played them now. That makes it an interesting enough take on the theme to warrant an article.

[FatherJack]

I'd already considered TIE Fighter, it was certainly genre defying, but the genre has arguably died out. Same as with Planescape/BG etc. UFO is the same again, although the new XCOM has brought turn based tactical games back into the limelight (and will hopefully spawn some similar games). Another good call on open world GTA-style games. I never liked Mafia, other people did. GTAIII was the pioneer, but VC was better.

FJ has reminded me of my point though. I thought of a few games while I was dreaming this up, but I wouldn't recommend anyone went and played them now. That makes it an interesting enough take on the theme to warrant an article.

BG patched to run in the BG2 engine and set to run in a decent resolution is actually better-looking than something like Towns, such is the detail they put into the enviroment. Similarly Freespace2 can be brought up to date, such that it's not all that different to the recent Evochron Mercenary. Since I didn't play either of those until this year, I would list them as recommendations.

GTA 1 and 2 were PC exclusives and still a fun diversion, GTA3 started as a PS2-exclusive and the initial PC release was a bit of a dog's dinner. Mafia at the time showed that a GTA3-style game could be done properly on the PC.

They might all be the subject for another article though, about how there's nothing new under the sun. Turn-based tactical games have never gone away, but they have been largely confined to Japanese RPGs and the like. They've been quietly refined over the years, no longer as being clunky and frustrating as something like the SSI Gold Box games were, then out comes the slick and polished XCOM and reminds us how much fun they always were. Anachronox and Septerra Core are two turn-based-combat games whose story outweighs their aging mechanics.

Other games which everyone should have played at least once would include Theme Hospital, Dungeon Keeper 2 (or Evil Genius) and Rollercoaster Tycoon.

[HereComesPete]

In terms of mass effect and burnout, they were released later because they were re-built to improve the graphics and to add more content. That to me is why they stand out as PC games that help define the platform.

As for the RPG genre dying out, couldn't agree less with that. As games developers strive to add more story and customisation into their games, they step into RPG territory. When you start managing inventory, building things and selecting character progression options then to me it doesn't matter if you're casting a spell, firing a gun, waving a sword or firing lasers attached to the side of a giant stompy robot, you're playing an rpg.

Dungeon Keeper 2 was awesome. Such a shame DK3 got canned when bullfrog got swallowed by EA.

[Dog Pants]

Character progression does not equal RPG, but I see your point. Actually, by my own internal definition I'd consider Mass Effect one of the closest games I've found to being an RPG, for the dialogue and game-changing decisions.

[deject]

Oh please, you can't say Bioshock was influential for "introducing story," because even that was essentially straight up ripped from System Shock II. Everything Bioshock did that was excellent was pretty much completely ripped off from System Shock II. Bioshock did execute really well, and it is a great game, but nothing it did was new or revolutionary. The best I can say to that regard is that it rescued the concepts of System Shock II from obscurity and re-presented it to the world in a more up to date fashion.

[Dog Pants]

Is that not enough? System Shock 2 doesn't stand up to modern scrutiny much, and Bioshock was far more successful. At any rate, I'd choose Half Life as the high watermark for that particular aspect of gaming.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Shooters: Wolfy 3d, quake, HL, Farcry, BF2.

First 3d shooter, first using models, first with decent npc interactivity/real story, amazing (at the time) open world and ai. And best example of large scale mp combat respectively.

[Roman Totale]

Wing Commander - a great space combat game with a decent plot and well designed ships. I haven't played many games of this genre that did it so well.

Portal - the definitive first person puzzler. Incredibly clever set up, extraordinarily fun gameplay, and a script that was hugely influential outside of its own medium.

Morrowind - this is how RPG should be. A huge world that took real effort to travel around, and one wrong turn and you'd be mush. No quick travel (other than certain "taxi points", but there weren't that many) or handy map markers here - you had to walk everywhere and consult a map if you wanted to find something.

Manic Miner - old school platformer, and still one of the best in my opinion.

Vampire: The Masquerade - but only if you play as a Malkavian.

[deject]

Is that not enough? System Shock 2 doesn't stand up to modern scrutiny much, and Bioshock was far more successful. At any rate, I'd choose Half Life as the high watermark for that particular aspect of gaming.

I don't see how System Shock 2 doesn't stand up to scrutiny, unless you're talking graphically. The systems it has are every bit as robust as anything these days. It comes from a era when games were a bit rougher around the edges, sure, but that shouldn't be held against it. Bioshock shouldn't be lauded just because most people ignored System Shock 2. Bioshock was much more successful because it was launched in an age of much larger marketing budgets, much improved graphics, and the fact that it stripped out the vast majority of complexity (i.e.: no inventory, simpler hacking, etc.) meaning the FPS only crowd didn't immediately tune it out.


I think System Shock 2 deserves a to be recognized as one of the best games ever made, but especially because it is near impossible to find a copy of it anywhere it will never get the credit it deserves.

I would add No One Lives Forever 1 & 2 to the list as some of the first games (or at least non-adventure games) that got being funny right. Many games have tried to be funny and failed miserably. NOLF made me laugh harder than any other game I can think of at the moment.

[Thompy]

Even though I don't know much about them, no one else has touched on it so I'll go back to simulators and nominate SimCity 2000. Although reading the wiki page it was originally a mac game (which was actually where I played it) but that counts, right?. It's the seminal game in the series, from a series and developer which is probably the most important and influential in the entire genre. And where else could you play it but on a PC (or, you know, Mac)?

[fabyak]

I think System Shock 2 deserves a to be recognized as one of the best games ever made, but especially because it is near impossible to find a copy of it anywhere it will never get the credit it deserves.

*cough*

http://www.gameswin.biz/gameen.php?id=520

(Please note, I've not actually downloaded it though)

[spoodie]

Now you must play through all of System Shock 2 before you can write your article.

I'd like to say Dear Esther, as an interesting examination of narrative and atmosphere.

[fabyak]

+1 for Dear Esther, a beautiful piece of story telling and atmosphere where an absence of a 'run' key works well as it gives you time to think on all that happens

I'd also like to add Dayz as it's one of the very rare games (especially with zombies) that's made me scream like a girl and have to play with the lights on