[TrashMan]

I never managed that one.. Had to either skip it or use cheats (killed a dozen star destroyers that way...Hell I killed dozens without cheats (just find a large group of them and fly around the bride one at full speed)

[Scuddie]

Speaking of cheats, ES3: Morrowind was once my favorite game.  However, I found the incentive to cheat to advance character development.  And once I found out how easy it was to cheat, the game got boring.  On one hand, cheating was neccessary to get thru certain parts of the game quickly, and on the other hand, cheating completely removed the challenge part of the game.  And for that self-inflicted reason, I can't enjoy the game the way I used to .

[pyro-manic]

Originally posted by BlueFlames


Problem being, so do most other RTS's.  In a genre where the main strategic element is development of a build order that lets you turn out fifty tanks or a hundred zerglings faster than your opponent, Black and White focused the player on other, deeper strategies.  There were flaws, such as your creature being excessively difficult to manage, but at least Lionhead dared to depart from the tired, outdated StarCraft and Command & Conquer gameplay models with Black and White.

Sounds like you need to play Ground Control . OK, it's more of an RTT (Real-Time Tactical) game than an RTS, but it's excellent. You can choose your units to start with, then you get deployed by dropship to the battlefield and have to accomplish your objectives with only those units. No reinforcements, no building, just maneuvering and tactics. And it was available for download for free from Fileplanet. It might still be there.

EDIT: Here it is. It says there aren't any keys left, but I'm sure you're resourceful enough to fix that. Or you can get it for about five quid from a bargain bin somewhere.

[Nuke]

descent 2

oh and elite

[Kamikaze]

A platformer everyone should play is Cave Story. It's an extremely fun freeware game made by Japanese developers (the linked site has the English patched version). Has great replayability because of its secrets and multiple endings.

[CP5670]

This is all fairly subjective and is related to what games I happened to play first. All of these are computer games, as I never got much into consoles.

FPS: Deus Ex (2000). When I first got this I played it for 14 hours straight; it was that engrossing. Extremely long (which I consider a good thing), very detailed story, open ended mission design and immersive atmosphere. There were a few weapon balance issues though. This is a tough category with a huge selection of choices and Descent 2 and Unreal come close, but the incredible variety of goofiness that can be performed in Deus Ex puts it on top. I have spent more time screwing around with game glitches than playing normally, and I've fully played through the game eight times with all the side quests.

Space sim: Freespace 2 (1999). Duh. Very few choices here in the first place, but this had an outstanding storyline, great gameplay, versatile mod support and an overall polished feel. Independence War 2 was better in some ways but its clunky interface made it less enjoyable than it might have been.

RTS: Command and Conquer (1995). One of the first RTS games, and much better story and campaigns than any of the subsequent C&C games. Side balance was generally pretty good as well. I spent a lot more with RA than this because of its skirmish mode and mod capabilities, but this was easily the better game overall. TA was an excellent multiplayer game but had boring singleplayer campaigns and I never found Starcraft all that great. I haven't kept track of RTS games in the last couple of years though.

Multiplayer: Unreal Tournament (1999). I thought I would make a separate category here, since multiplayer games are judged quite differently from singleplayer ones. Lots of gameplay options, almost perfect weapon balance, excellent map design and great netcode for its time. I was a hardcore player of this for over two years and had risen quite high in the official ladders at one point. The newer UT games are better in many ways but Epic messed up the weapon balance from the original one. After six years, it also still has the best, most detailed textures of any game in existence.

Racing: Ballistics (2001). By far the fastest racing game out there. Very high fun factor, although it has some bugs and hardware compatibility issues. I still play this every now and then.

Adventure: Mission Critical (1995). The best plot of any game I have ever seen, and plots are what make adventure games. Puzzles were for the most part a bit too easy though. Holmes 2: Case of the Rose Tattoo had almost as good a story and was very long, but had some annoying bugs and I'm a little partial to sci-fi games.

Puzzle: Lemmings (1992). I played the Mac version of this, which had much better graphics and music than the original DOS one. Very original concept and a great game across the board. I was completely obsessed with this one for years and I still have the hundreds of custom level plans I had drawn on paper when I was in elementary school. Never did find a level editor for it though. The expansion pack, Oh No More Lemmings, was also great. The sequels had various issues ranging from being too easy (L2) to having a bad interface (L3D).

Fighting: Time Commando (1995). Not really a conventional console style fighting game, but it probably fits best into this category. The shortest retail game I have ever played, but there are very few that match this one for sheer fun factor. Had to include it in here somewhere.

Freeware: Infotron (1993). Old Mac game, a clone of the DOS game Supaplex but with better graphics and sound. I can't count how many hours I spent with this back then. Very polished game for a free one, looked more professionally designed than most retail games at the time. I drew many custom levels for this one as well, although I didn't find a level editor until very recently and only for Supaplex. Another tough category, as I had all sorts of great stuff on my old Mac (still fire those old classics up from time to time) and the more modern Lasertank comes close too, but this was probably the best one.

I haven't really played much in the RPG, TBS of flight sim categories, so I won't say anything there.

[TopAce]

Now that everyone is mentioning a lot of games, I take a deep dive, too.

First Person Shooter: For Single player, Quake II, Half Life and Jedi Academy. For multiplayer, Quake III. (Unreal Tournament cannot even approach Q3 in gameplay and level design!). Quake II brings up some nice memories, probably it's the only FPS which's Single Player mode does not aim to annoy the player. Jedi Knight II makes you feel like a Jedi if you play in First Person mode and have a lightsaber in your hands, slaying stormtroopers and duelling Reborn. Of course, since it's LucasArts, it can annoy you in a single second when you get killed by a single touch after you have slain your opponent in half seven times. Jedi Knight I was good as the first game to have a lightsaber, but where LucasArts made blunder is that your character was simply incompetent of fending any blaster shots. Half Life was in every aspect, single-player focused. You not only needed your aiming skills but you also needed to use some strategy. I would say you rather needed strategy than powerful weapons.
Strategy: Red Alert 1 and StarCraft. Sometimes I hate StarCraft when the AI cheats so conspicuously, but for playing home-made single player missions, it's fun. You just have to be cautious in making your maps. Red Alert is a classical. Never touch its anti-player Single player campaigns, play multiplayer instead. You have a reasonable chance against the AI even on Medium, if you are good. Nothing is more deliberating than seeing how you swarm a Soviet base with hundreds of Medium tanks, Artilleries and Rangers.
Simulator: X-wing vs. TIE Fighter and X-wing Alliance. LucasArts games have always loved humilating the human player, but what can be done? If you play without warheads, it is enjoyable and not so annoying. FreeSpace is second only XWA in gameplay, the AI also has advantages over the vulnerable human race but the main fault of this game is that your shields are useless. It's good that there is FRED, so you could make some fun missions. It is bad, however, that the AI has inhuman aiming skills.
Arcade: Descent. It was ages ago I played with it, but I remember I played with it very much. Descent III was incredibly annoying when you had to get through a room, where every sort of spikes stood out and there was lava everywhere. You could not do anything to escape your death, the lava was burning you and you simply couldn't be any fast because you had to manoeuvre between the spikes. If you collided one, your vessel stopped, enemies came, laughed around you five times and shot you down. The map designer who made that should be hanged!

[Roanoke]

I reckon Battlefront is by far the best Star Wars game. Though I never really got into the old X-wing p.c. series

[Sandwich]

I think that the game(s) I enjoyed the most had to have been Battlezone I & II, Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising, Ground Control I & II, FS, C&C, Total Annihilation, The Longest Journey, TIE Fighter, and Midtown Madness I & II.

[TrashMan]

I have to agre. X-Wing Allaince had excellent AI.

My wingmates died very rarely and scored LOT'S of kills. they reaped trough tie fighters like there was no tomoorw.

Shields were weak, but that's one thing I liked about it. Despite being a lot tougher than a TIE fighter, your X-Wing was still very vulnerable and so were you. It really FELT dngerous when a TIE was on your rear, not to mention assaulting a Star Destroyer and dodging the hail of lasers. Now those ships were dangerus. Hell, gimme a Sath any time!

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by TopAce
Jedi Knight I was good as the first game to have a lightsaber

NOT. The original System Shock's laser rapier was, for all intents and purposes, a lightsaber.

Too bad you missed out on the truly great FPSs like DX and SS2.

[Ace]

Originally posted by Roanoke
I reckon Battlefront is by far the best Star Wars game.

*Darth Revan chokes Roanoke*

*DARTH NIHILUS!!!111[/b] feeds upon Roanoke's remains*

[Mongoose]

Originally posted by TopAce
Descent III was incredibly annoying when you had to get through a room, where every sort of spikes stood out and there was lava everywhere. You could not do anything to escape your death, the lava was burning you and you simply couldn't be any fast because you had to manoeuvre between the spikes. If you collided one, your vessel stopped, enemies came, laughed around you five times and shot you down. The map designer who made that should be hanged!

I'm assuming that you're talking about the area in level 2 that consists of caverns with acid on the ground that can take out your ship in a matter of seconds.  It's not really as hard as you remember.  You just have to keep sliding up, maneuver through the spikes carefully, and watch out for the Tubbs that enjoys pounding you into the acid.

[CP5670]

Battlezone I & II,

Very good stuff here. Unlike many people, I really liked the second game and thought it had significantly better gameplay than the first, although the singleplayer campaign story was messed up.

Too bad you missed out on the truly great FPSs like DX and SS2.

SS2 was another great game, forgot to mention that up there. It had major problems with weapon balance and some bad design decisions that severely messed up the gameplay though, which was a real pity since it was an awesome game in many other ways.

I'm assuming that you're talking about the area in level 2 that consists of caverns with acid on the ground that can take out your ship in a matter of seconds. It's not really as hard as you remember. You just have to keep sliding up, maneuver through the spikes carefully, and watch out for the Tubbs that enjoys pounding you into the acid.

Exactly, I just held down the slide up key and had my headlight on the whole time. Never found that part all that hard actually. The tubbs can usually be drawn out into a larger space if you know where he is and can get his attention. The thief lurking around in there can make it a little tricky, but the D3 thief was nowhere near as potent (and annoying) as the D2 one.

[Roanoke]

Originally posted by CP5670
SS2 was another great game, forgot to mention that up there. It had major problems with weapon balance and some bad design decisions that severely messed up the gameplay though, which was a real pity since it was an awesome game in many other ways.

I agree on the weapons, but care to elaberate on the gameplay issues ?

[CP5670]

Originally posted by Roanoke



I agree on the weapons, but care to elaberate on the gameplay issues ?

Well, for instance, it was usually not worth using any ballistic ranged weapon at all even if you had a lot of ammo because they deteoriated so ridiculously fast. I used melee weapons something like 98% of the time all the way until I got to that passageway that leads to the Many brain room. I broke a few of my things there, but it didn't matter at that point. There was also the fact that you needed a certain skill level to use a weapon at all, which not only made no sense but also killed the incentive to explore non-critical areas to get any better weapons. There were cases where I found some weapon and ammo for it quite early on, but couldn't use it until near the end of the game because it needed a very high weapons skill level and an equally high maintenance level to be viable. The advanced level 6 weapons, which were already underpowered, were made much more worthless because of this.

The respawning was also overused; it would have kept an element of surprise if used occasionally, but since almost everything respawned and always in the same spot, it frequently made more sense to just ignore enemies and run right past them. With maximum agility this was usually easy to do. The cyborg assassin was the only thing that could outrun you, and those sucked anyway. This wasn't a stealth game and there was no point in trying to sneak by since the enemies had no trouble seeing you in dark areas, but you could just pretend they weren't there.

I really liked a lot of things about this game, but the actual gameplay left a lot to be desired. It wasn't really the difficulty either; Thief 2 for example was quite a bit harder but also much more fun. SS2 was in general a revolutionary game that didn't really get the basics right. We need to have a game that combines the skill system and story of this with the gameplay balance and graphics (for their time) of something like Unreal or Descent 3.

Also, I'm not sure if this was a bug or what, but if you went up to a bot and whacked it with something repeatedly, it wouldn't return fire at all. Just kept backing up.

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by CP5670
Well, for instance, it was usually not worth using any ballistic ranged weapon at all even if you had a lot of ammo because they deteoriated so ridiculously fast.

This is flat-out wrong. Yes, the degradation was exaggerated, but it was also completely manageable. In the early stages of the game there are pistols and shotguns scattered all over the place, so if your weapon breaks, who cares? Just grab another one. In the later stages of the game, it's expected that you'll have upgraded your maintenance skill, and between that and the maint tools scattered all over the place, keeping your weapons in tip-top shape is easy.

Also, the assault rifle is easily the most powerful weapon in the game. With a fully-modded rifle and the Sharpshooter OS upgrade, you can take down a Rumbler in three shots!

[CP5670]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
This is flat-out wrong. Yes, the degradation was exaggerated, but it was also completely manageable. In the early stages of the game there are pistols and shotguns scattered all over the place, so if your weapon breaks, who cares? Just grab another one. In the later stages of the game, it's expected that you'll have upgraded your maintenance skill, and between that and the maint tools scattered all over the place, keeping your weapons in tip-top shape is easy.

Depends on the weapon. The deterioration was really bad on some things. Try out the viral proliferator on hard for example; that thing lost a point on just about every shot. The pistols and shotguns were easy enough to find, but once you got to the point where their ammo was plentiful enough to use regularly, you had the crystal shard available, which was overall a better weapon. It's also much harder to find replacements for the other weapons. You could upgrade your maintenance skill, but that took some time on the harder difficulties and wasn't worth it given that the shard was just as effective without needing this.

Actually the crystal shard with a decent strength (worth having anyway for the extra inventory space), the lethal weapon upgrade and exotic weapons on 3 or so was extremely powerful, had no ammo usage and didn't degrade, so that along agility on 6 (worth having anyway for running past enemies and dodging projectiles) for hit-and-run strikes made it pretty much the ultimate weapon in almost any situation. I had a pistol and a grenade launcher for the odd rumbler and a few other things that the shard was not good against, but didn't need to use those often.

Also, the assault rifle is easily the most powerful weapon in the game. With a fully-modded rifle and the Sharpshooter OS upgrade, you can take down a Rumbler in three shots!

The assault rifle was powerful but still not good enough considering the skills you needed to use/modify/maintain it on the harder difficulties. I found something like four of those in the entire game, and only one was in decent shape (7), so you basically needed to get level 4 maintenance just for this weapon, as the other things for which this was needed were pretty much useless. The grenade launcher with incendiary grenades was just as powerful with much lower skill costs. There isn't quite as much ammo for it, but then again rumblers are pretty rare.

heh, talking about all this makes me feel like playing through this game again. The only problem is that I can't get it to work on anything but 640x480 on my main computer. It works okay there but is very unstable and crashes constantly at any other resolution. My old Win98 retro game machine runs it fine at 1024x768, but isn't fast enough for any antialiasing.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]I found that if you concentrate on maintainence, hack and ignore exotic weapons altogether that you end up with the ability to get cheap items from replicators (maint. tools), you can upgrade your standard to a good level and you can keep your kit in good shape using few tools.

Up your strength, agility and energy weapons to max and the laser rapier becomes deadly enough that the shard is irrelevant.
[/color]

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by CP5670
The assault rifle was powerful but still not good enough considering the skills you needed to use/modify/maintain it on the harder difficulties.

You must have amazingly high standards for "good enough" then.  Every time I've played a grunt Marine character, the game turns into a cakewalk at the precise moment I acquire enough standard weapons skill to use the assault rifle (usually around Hydro deck if I'm smart with my cybermods). It's considered in the SS2 community to be almost unbalancingly overpowered. Of course, it'll still break fast if you foolishly try to shoot everything. That's why you melee the weaker foes, and save the AR for enemies with ranged attacks, or who explode when killed.

Speaking of melee, one of the more fanatic Shockers over at TTLG has actually written a melee-only guide to finishing SS2. Yeah that's right... melee ONLY. No ranged weapons. Ever.

http://tnt.freylia.net/ss2/