Top 20 PC Games on Windows XP 194
ApacheVE writes "Voodoo Extreme has up a story called Generation XP: Top 20 Games of the Last Generation. They call out some of the best games released in the Windows XP era, to mark the passing into the 'next generation' of PC gaming this past week. Some favorites include Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament 2004, Civilization IV, World of Warcraft and other titles that helped shape the era." Any titles you see missing from the list? The XP years were truly great, as far as PC titles went; how long do you think it will be before Vista has enough market penetration to make a difference in gaming?
The List and My Commentary (Score:5, Interesting)
19 -- Halo. WTF? It was great on the XBOX but not a good FPS by PC standards.
18 -- Rom Total War.
17 -- UT2k4. Why this version? All of them were really good. Sequels should be disqualified.
16 -- MoH Allied Assault. It was ok. I really hated the way the game cutscened a lot. And the fact that it forced a tutorial sucked.
15 -- NWN. Great game and very modable. Still play this after, what, 5 years.
14 -- Max Payne. Loved bullet time.
13 -- C&C Generals. Never played it.
12 -- Guild Wars. MMO without fees. Awesome.
11 -- Civ4. After Civ3, I was really not willing to buy another Civ game. I still play Alpha Centuari though.
10 -- Warcraft 3. Not a big fan of RTS. Never tried it.
9 -- Doom3. Never played it. Too dark. Duct tape mod really showed how dumb game designers are. And WTF with batteries that last 10 seconds?
8 -- FEAR. Stupid name but great game. The demo gave away almost all the scary parts though. Bullet time and the nail gun was awesome.
7 -- Company of Heroes. Very fun for a RTS. Still, never played it more than a few hours.
6 -- BF1942. Played the shit out of this at LAN parties. Once Desert Combat was out, played the shit out of it again. The follow-ups sucked bad though.
5 -- KOTOR. Another port from XBOX. It was fun. Loved the moddable lightsaber.
4 -- Call of Duty. I was really burned out on WW2 games at this point. God, can we get another war?
3 -- Oblivion. Something about a first-person RPG just sucks. After 10 minutes of not knowing where the last rat was, I gave up and uninstalled it.
2 -- Half-Life 2. I guess it was OK. I only bought it because of CS:S
1 -- WoW. This game is a lot of fun and very social. Most of my friends play this to extremes. Once I got high-level, I quit. I don't have time to do the same 6+ hour crawl 20 times to get the uber sword of pwnage. I really loved the fact that I get credit for *not* playing. Makes leveling much easier.
So, where was X2 or X3? Both were lots of fun. How about GalCiv or GalCiv2? Empire at War was a blast as was Hero Quest. Flight simulators (all sims really) were missing. GTR, Falcon Allied Force, Flight Sim X, LOMAC, and IL2 were a ton of fun. As was Silent Hunter 3. Realistic sims are, for me, what really keeps me updating my PC. Everything else can be duplicated on a console. The first time you complete the ramp start in Falcon, you'll know the PC is king.
No Starcraft or Fallout 2? Forget it! (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure Halo repeats itself, but you then again so did lots of games; Wizardry is a fine example of kill, heal, repeat. And that piece of software is over 25 years old now.
I didnt read the article (this being
(and I'm posting AC since im too lazy yo log in and karma whore or whatever.)
ps, I am currently playing around with KOTOR again..fun game!
Re:Understated (Score:2, Interesting)
The PC version of Halo was a lot of fun. The controls were just like any other FPS and the graphics were on par with other games made in that same year. My friends and I enjoyed playing Halo after ut2k4 became a bore and, in my opinion, it has a lot of great multiplayer maps (Blood Glutch, Sidewinder, and Death Island to name a few). There were many game types and had a decent number of hacks/mods to make the game interesting for quite a long time. If this list came out a few years ago, I would be shocked to not see the game within the top 5.
Saying the game should not be on the list of greatest PC games of all time because you didn't like the xbox version is complete BS. The controller issue you talk about is non-existent on the PC version and the graphics aren't that bad at all. It mainly sounds like your complaints are with the xbox itself and not the actual game.
These are just more of the same. (Score:2, Interesting)
What about the games that actually tried (and succeeded) to do something a little bit different, like Grimm Fandango, Hitman, GTA, and so forth?
No GTA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Last Generation (Score:3, Interesting)
Given there's one DX-10 card line out there - nVidia's - and they're facing a class action lawsuit because their Vista ready card isn't Vista ready [slashdot.org]... Given that Vista takes away several audio features from Creative's line of sound cards [creative.com]... Given that the best known technical name in the gaming industry says it's not worth bothering with... [slashdot.org]
Can you really call the most current generation that actually works "Last Generation"?
As things stand, I was under the impression that all Vista does for gaming is disable features you have under XP. Oooh... And give you a couple of exciting menus for games and game specs.
Re:The Goods (Score:5, Interesting)
20) Rise of Nations - yeah, ok, this seems fair enough. It's a nice concept and still a fun game to play. I may even have moved it a little higher up the list. Graphics are dated quite badly now, so a sequel wouldn't go amiss.
19) Halo - w... t... f... - sure, the Xbox version was great, even if its own sequel does comprehensively out-shine it, but the PC version always felt like a nasty hack at best.
18) Rome: Total War - reasonable pick and probably in about the right place on the list. Very solid game.
17) Unreal Tournament 2004 - this made me go "hmm" at first, but on balance, I think I could live with this here. It was definitely the best iterration of the series. I'm not quite sure how TFA manages to claim the original is better.
16) Medal of Honour Allied Assault - I guess you have to include one of the WW2 shooters and I guess this one is the obvious candidate. If this were the only one on the list, I could have been perfectly happy. Unfortunately, if you look further down...
15) Neverwinter Nights - ooooh, tricky one. On the one hand, the game as released, straight out of box, is pretty damned poor, with an original campaign that falls waaaaay short of the usual Bioware standards. The sequel is massively better in this respect. However, I will grant you that, with two solid expansions and a huge mass of mods available, NWN has grown way beyond what originally came out of the box.
14) Max Payne 2 - Can be completed in about 4-6 hours by an average player and has no replay value. No thanks.
13) Command and Conquer: Generals - Oh god no. Command and Conquer with a slight graphical facelift, but none of the production values that made the very early installments in the series great. Gameplay that was outdated compared to other RTSes even at release.
12) Guild Wars - not played it, so can't really comment.
11) Civilisation IV - frankly, the Civ games have never done it for me. However, I will grant that they do seem to push the requisite buttons for an awful lot of people, so happy to let this one stand.
10) Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos - yeah, good pick. Probably the best of the small-scale RTSes from the XP era. I'm mystified as to why the article says the controls were tricky, though. They were basically the same as any other RTS around, if not slightly better due to the decent hotkeys system.
9) Doom 3: Yep, decent pick. I know a lot of people found fault with it, but this game scared the living shit out of me (at least for the first half of the game). I'd probably have put this in the bottom end of the list, though, given the lack of variety. I actually felt Quake 4 was better, so may just have substituted that altogether.
8) F.E.A.R: again, a decent pick just on account of atmosphere. Plus the graphics were beautiful and the AI probably the best we've seen in an fps.
7) Company of Heroes: Hmm... maybe. Personally, I'd have substituted Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War for this, though. They're basically the same game underneath but, particularly with the expansions, I find Dawn of War slightly deeper. Still, there's no denying that Company of Heroes is very, very pretty.
6) Battlefield 1942: Yes, I'd probably go along with this, on the proviso that all of the sequels and expansion packs are excluded. BF2 in particular was an utter crock.
5)Knights of the Old Republic: Yes, definitely. Proof that Lucas should have let Bioware write Episodes 1-3.
4) Call of Duty: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO. What the fuck is it with this game? Why the hell do it and its sequels continue to attact such plaudits. An inferior, dumbed down Medal of Honour clone which brought nothing new to the genre at all. On a related note, why do all these countless WW2 fpses only feature battles from the second half of WW2 which the Allies won (oh, and Pearl Harbour). I grow tired of the "inevitable march to victory" feel of these games and feel that it actually fails to do history justice.
3) E
Re:Far Cry (Score:4, Interesting)
Far Cry allowed exploration and variation in moving around and solving scenarios. The latter two tried to be interactive movies, where story kept you from stepping outside the preset ride, sometimes in really ugly ways. They must be nice as a first FPS experience, but they're not about playing so much as shooting on que.
Far Cry had a crap story with great gameplay and I love it
Re:13 FPS Games? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The Goods (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. Disaster on the pc until the hardware caught up, but still left a lot to be desierd.
17) Unreal Tournament 2004 - this made me go "hmm" at first, but on balance, I think I could live with this here. It was definitely the best iterration of the series. I'm not quite sure how TFA manages to claim the original is better.
Grfx and extra play styles made 03 "better" IMO, but some of the weapons (sniper rifle/jump boots)
were lost (then re-added, IIRC).
14) Max Payne 2 - Can be completed in about 4-6 hours by an average player and has no replay value. No thanks.
Partially true, as the start is "easy" and you've gotta work up to harder difficulty and at highest
the story changes. This makes some replay value, but the biggest thing that made the game a blast
was the "Dead Man Walking" levels (as well as add-ons).
Hours worth of fun, IME, especially if you enjoy a game like serious sam.
Doom3 and FEAR: Doom3 need such high brightness to even be halfway playable, and lots of tweaks
to run decently (30 second pauses between doors because of the 32M of level cache on levels
that boasted textures in the Gig range? Ouch). Once tweaked, good game, if aggrivating at times.
FEAR: WOW. Max Payne 2.9, with horror film elements and excellent story, twists and ending (IMO).
BF1942, especially Desert Combat: Played the hell out of it a year after release, set up my own
server and enjoyed it thouroughly for over two years after that. Still miss it sometimes, sadly
upload b/w on cable sucks ass, so I slowly gave it up.
Oblivion: Not my style, usually, but 7 months of hours of play per day. Addictive as hell.
However, you've got the "killer bugs" backwards. The PC version was fixed first by the mod community
rather quickly. "Stutter bug", "Guild game/story killers" and even down to minor glitches the
360 experienced as well, but had to wait for months vs weeks/days.
Heck check out the oblivion mod forums, the program updates were the base (memory, speed, compat)
but the actual game play fixes = mod community (PC).
Half-life2: Agreed that it had been over-hyped, but it was a good game, story and play but you are
right some of the missed bits and bobs made for raised eyebrows and some aggrivation (shooting
from gameplay cell, to a "display/movie" cell...the attacking walkers while you are on top of a
building).
Farcry: Demo vs Game difference, the style/difficulty changed and the granularity of the demo's
difficulty was lost in the real game. Either too easy, or too frustrating, IMO.
Didn't play it near as long as I did the demo. You are right, should have been on the list.