What are the best games you've played on PC from all time?

Missed off C&C Generals/ Zero Hour

 

This is a list of games that engaged me and I still feel are good.

Diablo
Warlords 2 (online multiplayer via e-mail!)
Planescape Torment
Warcraft
Civilization II (3 is better, but...)
Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (2 might be tighter, and more original...same as with Civ basically.)
Quake 3 Arena (played this a lot. More a sport than a game though, if that makes sense.)
Masters of Orion 2
Vampire: The Masquerade - bloodlines
X^2 (Space Sim)
Morrowind
Bioshock (Ayn Rand of my youth drawn to it's conclusion.)
Mass Effect 1
Secret World (a game not made for youth.)

A troubling thing is that there are no new games on this list.
There have been good games, yes, but they are embellishments on what went before. Polished but rarely as a whole better for someone who has already played the originals. Whether this is just a natural effect of experience, or whether it's a consequence of maturity and risk aversion from producers, I don't know. Maybe a combination. But I don't really want to put "the same thing with more spit and polish" on this list even though I loved DOOM 2016 for instance.

Edit: Ah, have to include World of Warcraft. MMO:s as a genre has evolved in ways that doesn’t suit me, but entering Azeroth for the first time and discovering the (then) mindblowing scope and hugeness of the world was fantastic. And of course seeing other people in that same world going about whatever business they had or just chilling with a fishing pole was, well, oddly nice. It defined the genre. May have doomed it too.

 

Fond memories not in chronological order:

Mass Effect (PC)
Eye of Beholder (Amiga)
Castle Master (C64 vectors yey!)
Alien Breed 3D TKM II (Amiga)
PitStop 2 (C64)
Forza (XBOX)
GunShip 2000 (Amiga)
The Witcher 1,2,3 (PC)
Riddick: Escape from the Butcher Bay (PC)
DeusEx (PC)
Half-Life (PC)
Blood II (PC - specificaly MP via serial cable or later BNC 10Mbps network)
GTA IV (PC)
Quake all of them with special memories in QII MP and Q3 Team Arena (PC)
Unreal (PC)
Far Cry - the first one (PC)
Crysis - again first one was the most impressive (PC)

Not fully opinionated about CP2077 as it's too fresh of a game, but I was immersed in the city and story, for sure best game I've played in 2020.

 

I just remembered "Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis" !

 

WAY too many to list. Here a few.

Interstate 76
The original Deus Ex
Doom
Magic Carpet (1 and 2)
NOLF (No One Lives Forever for you heathens who haven't played it)
Dungeon Keeper (1 and 2)
Wasteland (the original)
Wing Commander (all of them)
Aces of the Pacific
Aces over Europe
Diablo (1 and 2)
Ultima Underworld
Thief (1 and 2)
Dragon Age Origins (the rest were trash)
Vampire: The Masquerade
Ori and the Blind Forest
Ori and the Will of the Wisp
Cyberpunk 2077
Lemmings (the original)
X-com (1 and 2, the originals not the simplified new ones).
Fallout (1 and 2)
Fallout Tactics
Warlords Battlecry III
Freespace (1 and 2)
The Bards Tale Trilogy
The Might and Magic Trilogy
Overlord (1 was the best, 2nd was decent, 3rd was trash)
Wizardry series
Everquest

Dear lord I could go on and on. So many great games from the 80's and 90's that are virtually forgotten now.

If I was a billionaire, I'd spend most of my fortune to try to get NOLF out of rights hell so that it could be re-released. I'd also immediately fund as faithful of a remake as I could of Interstate 76.

Regards,
SB

 

It still holds up. Good game to play again.

 

Lemmings and dragon age origins rate highly on my list also. Though I played lemmings on amiga. Worms was also great, though played that one also on amiga.

Does anyone remember Scorched Earth? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_Earth_(video_game) I didn't have scorched earth on amiga so I programmed my own version using amos(fancy basic)

 

Loved that game. One of my very earliest memories of PC gaming!

 

Alone in the dark 1 & 2
Half-life 1 & 2
Portal 1 & 2

 

Begin 2 Tactical Starship Simulation
Master of Orion
Battlezone (1998 game)
System Shock 2
Total Annihilation
Lightspeed
Dark Forces
Star Trek TNG AFU

How's that for a disjointed sampling of old, stirring favorites? For modern titles,

Dishonored series
Prey (2017)
Alien Isolation
Outlast 1/2
Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Amnesia series

 

The Amiga was a PC (Personal Computer) also. I dislike how many people now only associate PC with x86 DOS/Windows PCs. Just like the TRS-80, C64, Apple ][, Mac, etc. are all PCs. I'm not sure whether to blame Apple (their horrible commercials pitting "PC" versus Mac, when the Mac was a PC) or IBM for this.

Oh, I should also throw Oregon Trail in there as well.

Regards,
SB

 

Some of the classics I played with amiga. I think these all time greats considering their time. Some hold up still today, some not so much
sim city
stunt car racer (still is great game via winaue)
International karate+
super cars II in 2 player mode
pool of radiance
winter games (multiplayer, single player sucks)
pac-mania, the best pacman game there is. Even my mother got hooked into this one for a while
any of the pinball games from digital illusions

and many more.

 

I was rocking a Tandy 1000 TX with its EGA-ish graphics and super cool sound chip. Good stuff for your Space Quest 3 needs.

Sim City was the purview of the school's Mac LC / LC II machines. Very educational. I think I got more joy playing around with system settings on those machines though and messing them all up haha.

 

Do NOT start up an Amiga emulator and revisit Gunship 2000...some games we remember looking better then they really did...I almost had to poke out my eyes after running WinUAE and Gunship 2000

 

PitStop2 was amazing. So much fun playing it with my cousins. Golden axe(amiga) was similarly fun co-opped. Oh, and how could I have forgotten. Turrican2 was amazing and is all time great.

 

Yup Turrican 2 was one of the best experiences I had on the Amiga.
Along with Xenon 2 Megablaster, Chaos Engine, Lemmings, Railroad Tycoon, Lotus Turbo Challange 2, Silly Putty and Bubble and Squeak.

And best of all was Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix, and it's take-it-in-turns multiplayer, on Sunday afternoons with my Dad and brothers
When you leave Ayron Senna in the lead of the GP, only to return to find another player has taken him out with one of their backmarker drivers.

It's quite surprising how few modern games have been listed on this thread. Is that because many posters are of a certain age game less now, have games lost their magic, are they aimed at a different auidence or something else?

 

I really enjoyed all the games you listed! Geoff Crammonds GP was really a lot of fun.

For my part I tried to list the first game of the genre that was a masterpiece in my opinion. Rest I didn't list as I feel they are derivative and build on top of the originals. In some cases I picked my favorite of the series of games like quake2/unreal tournament or civ5.

Highly recommend trying dungeon master/chaos strikes back in case one hasn't played it or wants to revisit it:

http://www.dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Games/

http://dmweb.free.fr/

 

No doubt nostalgia plays a large part.

 

My thoughts are the old games were a great time in their day and are interesting historically, and perhaps fun to check out again in some cases, but certainly not worthy of obsessing over.

 

So, I enjoy watching Luke Morse repair old arcade and console hardware. He was working on getting an Amiga 500 up and running awhile back, connected to an arcade cabinet, and ran some Turrican 2 at 16 mins into the video. It was the first time I'd seen the game.