Rispon Avenue

Finally I can look at the final five of the top 25 PC games of all time, according to IGN.

5) Battlefield 1942 – This is another of those famous games I haven’t played and aren’t too interested in playing. These sorts of games often make me think that it’s the experience of playing games with friends that makes them stand out in the people’s minds, rather than the game itself. That’s not to say this game wasn’t good, I don’t doubt that, but the great fondness that the game is remembered with may be brought on by the multiplayer.

4) Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn – This is one of my favourite games of all time. This game had it all! A great story, fun characters, huge array of weapons and armour to be collected, heaps of different environments to explore, and enough hours to keep you playing for months. I really enjoyed this game, the amount of customisation you had for your own character was so refreshing, still many games don’t meet this standard of customisation and I find it frustrating. The expansion was a heck of a lot of fun, too, and I liked where the game ended up.

3) Civilization IV – Another fantastic game, this is a game that I keep coming back to, keep playing every now and then. It is a great game, and has such a strong ‘one more turn’ inducing sort of play. I really like the Civilopedia, its quite enjoyable to see where the inspiration for the units comes from in history. I’ve always found the Civ games fun, but this one is the best, in my opinion.

2) Star Wars TIE Fighter – I never played this game, and neither flight simulators nor Star Wars games are really interesting to me, so even though it’s supposed to be good, I think the previous two are better. :)

1) X-COM: UFO Defense – I had heard of this game, but never looked into it, and totally missed it when it came out. But if the little write up is anything to go by, I would love to play this game. It doesn’t seem like a great game to look at, but I love games that are very in depth, that give a great story, and that keep the player coming back to play even after a decade, much like Excelsior phase one: Lysandia is to me.

So, interesting list, and though there are some that I think should have been in there, there are a lot of great games here.

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Now for the next set of my reactions to IGN’s to 25 PC games of all time.

15) Command & Conquer – This is an alright RTS game, in my opinion, but there are others I prefer. Often the themes are less appealing to me than those you would find in Age of Empires, Total War, or Star Craft games.

14) Company of Heroes – Somehow I completely missed this game, but it looks pretty damn good. I may have to retract what I said in the above comments regarding RTS games with real-world settings.

13) The Sims – I really did enjoy The Sims when it first came out, and, thanks largely to my SO’s enjoyment of the game, had nearly all the expansions by the time Maxis moved onto The Sims 2, and oh, wasn’t that annoying? There’s so much to like about this game, yet so much to dislike about those who market it.

12) World of Warcraft – This is my blog so I get to say what I like. I hate this game, it looks like crap, it lacks depth, character, and respect for it’s players, a startlingly large percentage of which seem to be idiots.

11) SimCity – This was a great game, so much fun, so hard to stop playing in spite of a pretty simple premise.

10) Call of Duty – I’ve never really felt any desire to play any of the Call of Duty games, in spite of the raving reviews the series usually receives. I think it’s the setting, I just don’t find myself interested in it.

9) MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat – I didn’t play this game, and only have a vague recollection of it.

8) Rome: Total War – These games are always just amazing fun, and usually just as amazing (for their time) graphics wise. These games actually push my graphic cards (I always try to have good ones) and that is another fun side to playing them for me, personally.

7) Sid Meier’s Pirates! – I’ve played later versions of this game, but never the original, and from what I’ve read, the later ones don’t stand up to how good the original was.

6) Half-Life – I didn’t play Half Life, but Half Life 2 was a fantastic game. I enjoyed it so much, I thought the game was just the right combination of on foot and vehicle levels, I liked the accuracy of the weaponry and the story-line was fun too. Unfortunately I had a fatal error in my version and didn’t get past the first few areas of Part 2. I think it was a corrupted texture, but didn’t get around to reinstalling and going further.

The last five will be in the next post, because I think they deserve a post of their own.

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IGN posted an article about the best 25 PC games so I will list here what those games are, and what my take on them was.

25) Falcon 4.0 – Whilst flight simulators aren’t really my thing, I like the realism that was attempted here. I also think it was a good turn for game developers to release the source code, as fans have been able to update and add to this game for quite a while.

24) Diablo – This was an amazing game, a lot of fun, a lot of memories. Remember Wurt? That annoying little boy who sold good equipment at ridiculously high prices? I laughed when I saw that his wooden leg was included in the second game, but it was also kind of sad. This was the benchmark game for action RPGs, a genre I still get a lot of enjoyment from. I’m very excited to see the third one of these release in the not too distant future.

23) Doom – I actually haven’t played Doom, I’ve played Doom II on the Playstation, but not this one. The second one was great, and from what I’ve heard, the first was better.

22) Unreal Tournament – Another that I’ve never played, and doesn’t hold the same kind of appeal for me because, in spite of being an MMO player, multiplayer just isn’t a big deal for me.

21) Deus Ex – The sequel to this game is among one of my all time favourites. I haven’t actually played the first one, but I think I may just have to rectify that. I really appreciate games that allow the player to take different, complicated, options in a game. It’s so refreshing!

20) Grim Fandango – This game was a heck of a lot of fun, but also too difficult. Whilst it was good, it didn’t quite achieve the awesomeness of Monkey Island, in my opinion.

19) Fallout – This is another where I have played further along in the series, but in this case I have actually played the original title as well. Fallout is a great, unique, and engaging game, and I’m looking forward to trying out Fallout 3 on the PS3!

18) System Shock 2 – I haven’t played this game before, but from the description given by IGN, I think I may have to go find an old copy.

17) Crysis – This game looks amazing, and sounds like a lot of pick-up-and-play fun. I think I’ll have to give it a go.

16) StarCraft – Real Time Strategy games can be so much fun, but StarCraft and StarCraft II are among some of the most enjoyable. Along with Age of Empires, this is the top of the RTS ladder, in my opinion.

I’ll follow up tomorrow with 15 through 1.

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