PC Gaming Top 16 PC Games Evarrrr!!!1 (according to a Newegg.com tournament)

Emperor Tippy

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If you are including an Elder Scrolls game, Morrowind blows Skyrim out of the water. Both before and after mods, and before mods I'm honestly not sure if any ES title should be on the list.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
Yes? And the Roman Empire had maybe 45 million people in it while Brazil has over 200 million. Serious question, do you think four times as important to world history as Rome? Absolute numbers often aren't important compared to position and relative percentages.

He called Half-Life 2 a "flash in the pan" as part of his argument.

That's what I was responding to. You can make much better arguments that Homeworld and C&C were "flashes in the pan." Hell, you could argue that about the RTS genre, at least in regard to that style of RTS that C&C, Dawn of War, and Starcraft are in.

Half life's only lasting influence was the gravity gun, which a bunch of other games borrowed and improved on before eventually discarding as a gimmick. Portal didn't even do that much, and died unfinished with no legacy beyond "the cake is a lie" jokes.

Portal 2 does have a definitive ending. That's what Portal 2 is supposed to be. Chell finally leaves, and goes outside. She's free, for real this time.

And it absolutely does have a legacy. Any 3D puzzle game ends up being compared with Portal 2. Portal 2 is at the top of a niche genre.

Dark Messiah came out a few years later, and did everything half life did, and did it better, and added more stuff. It has physics, but they're integrated into the whole game instead of having a jarring delineation between physics sections and combat, you could actually use physics as a tool to fight and navigate (and like, as a regular thing, not just a "hey, here's a gun that shoots physics objects, good luck"). It was also an unbroken first person game, but you character actually had a personality and could make decisions, both in how the character reacted to the world and how you the player approached the game. You could play it as a magic based shooter, or a hack and slash, or a stealth game, or even a mix of the three. You could even make choices that would change how the game ended.

The difference is that Dark Messiah isn't as memorable or as well known as Half Life, but yes, if are standards are solely about gameplay quality, then Dark Messiah is going to beat Half Life.

But on the opposite end, that's obviously not the criteria people are solely concerned about, or else they wouldn't be recommending so many old games. Influence, fame, and prestige also matter.

If you are including an Elder Scrolls game, Morrowind blows Skyrim out of the water. Both before and after mods, and before mods I'm honestly not sure if any ES title should be on the list.

The nostalgia glasses on some people here are thick enough to make the blind see.
 
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Battlegrinder

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And it absolutely does have a legacy. Any 3D puzzle game ends up being compared with Portal 2. Portal 2 is at the top of a niche genre.

By lazy games journalists with a shallow reference pool, maybe. But that doesn't prove a lot.

EDIT: Also, this contracts your previous claim about it being so much bigger than C&C. RTS is a much larger genre than 3D puzzle games, so the RTS fan base is much more widely dispersed across a larger number of titles, while the puzzle genre is much more concentrated.

But on the opposite end, that's obviously not the criteria people are solely concerned about, or else they wouldn't be recommending so many old games. Influence, fame, and prestige also matter.

Ok, but HL's influence was a gimmick it passed on to other games for a few years, it's famous for "Valve can't count to 3" jokes, and in terms of prestige its not even the most notable to come out that year, let alone of all time.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
By lazy games journalists with a shallow reference pool, maybe. But that doesn't prove a lot.

EDIT: Also, this contracts your previous claim about it being so much bigger than C&C. RTS is a much larger genre than 3D puzzle games, so the RTS fan base is much more widely dispersed across a larger number of titles, while the puzzle genre is much more concentrated.

It doesn't at all. C&C being in a bigger genre than Portal 2 does not at all contradict the idea that Portal 2 is a bigger game than C&C.

(Even then, I'm not even sure I'd say RTS is substantially bigger than 3D puzzle games...)

For another random example, FPS is a much bigger genre than 2D platformer, but Bloodstained is a bigger game than HROT.
 

Husky_Khan

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Imagine calling Half Life blatantly unfinished...

I'm not sure which, but either Half Life or Half Life 2 deserves to be considered one of the greatest PC Games ever.

Half Life 2 is an amazing game with above average shooter mechanics. I've played almost every game that was listed. Halo 2, Doom 3, Painkiller, Medal of Honor, and Call of Duty. *Pauses* Wait... I actually have played all of those games. Half Life 2's physics engine, skeletal animation, voice acting, built in cinematics, interactive, the Source engine and G-mod and alive worlds and crazy enemies are better then all of those games. Halo 2 might be the best of the bunch but it's a console game.

Painkiller, Doom 3, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty all have extremely static worlds compared to Half Life's settings. They're all fixed paths more or less, but comparing the Highway 17 or Ravenholm or the various City 17 settings? Even the Water Hazard levels. Way more beautiful and dynamic and memorable then anything I can (barely) remember from those other games listed. IIRC Call of Duty (Or maybe it was Medal of Honor) had me parachute into France as a Pathfinder and on that very first level I walked up to a house to open a door... and a message popped up saying I would have no reason to open a locked door. Wow that's interactive and deeply immersive level design. Painkiller was basically a boomer or retro shooter, a throwback to even older games with just as dumb (though creatively designed) monsters. Doom 3 had some interesting things but even that game was eclipsed and a literal flash in the pain. Plus Quake IV was literally better then all of the games you mentioned, Halo 2 included. Fight me!

The description of Half Life 2 as a 'flash in the pan' is extremely aberrant. Compare it to Halo 2 and I've met Halo-ites who somehow confused Halo 2 with Halo 3 on occasion. Like... what the hell? I know people that still play it today like its an annual ritual. Half Life 2 had good or decent gameplay, though I find the harping on how the game stops when your doing physics puzzles hilarious. I guess if your extremely ADHD then you can't be entertained by such things, but regardless of people not liking the puzzles, the map design (no cheap and annoying hidden monster alcoves like in Doom 3) is great compared to those other games compared to. Call of Duty had its iconic Omaha Beach Assault (or was it Medal of Honor? I can't recall, they're both so memorable :p ).

I can still remember that intro, I can remember the entire world building of City 17 in a setting that was so far removed from the original Half Life and getting into the atmosphere and sinking into it immediately. Those giant striders. That PHYSICS advert of the guard knocking a can off of the trashcan for me to throw away. The Airboat chased by the Hunter-Killer choppers and the ridiculous amount of explosive barrels along the canals. Playing fetch with Dog with the Gravity Gun for the first time. All of Ravenholm from the chirping Poison Headcrabs to the screaming fast zombies. Beautiful sights of Highway 17. I can literally just remember so many things, fresh in my mind and off the top of my head even though I haven't played the game in literal years. It's so good and iconic and memorable despite its "barely passable FPS" quality. It's like a damned Christopher Nolan film or beautiful action filled arthouse film compared to some explosive cinematic diarrhea like you'd see in a Call of Duty Modern Warfare game. I'd struggle to recall as much from a narrative heavy and 'original' FPS style game like Bioshock, much less something like Doom 3 or even Halo 2 (I do remember the Piranha Plant guy, I think the G-Men had a better presence though).

And stating it's not notable, in general, much less its own year, is silly. It was the biggest PC game release that year IIRC. If not, it was up there. It won over forty Game of the Year Awards. My Dad's copy of Computer Gaming World *blows off the dust* says it won the Game of the Year by default. It's won Game of the Decade awards. The only PC game that sold more then it did was World of Warcraft. It got the highest rating in Metacritic and Game Ranking. It's so popular it made Steam popular, because believe me, it wasn't popular until you needed to download that shit to play Half Life 2. Just last month we had almost 15,000 people log in and play Half Life 2 in a stupid pointless cause to raise awareness with Valve over us not getting a Half Life 3. :cry:

Plus you didn't even mention Unreal Tournament 2004. Your arguments are all invalid. :p

Flight sims themselves are already niche before you even get into space flight sims.

You're also quite obviously biasing the game towards strategic simulators.

While I agree that popularity obviously isn't everything, I do think that simulators, including strategic simulators definitely deserve consideration for great PC Games. Even though not as popular now... flight and space (and even submarine and ship) sim games did have strong influence in the PC Gaming markets at various times even if it was a long time ago. Same with RTS's. Just because they're not as popular now shouldn't discount them too much when considering best PC Games of 'All Time.'
 
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Husky_Khan

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Oh man I'm looking at 2004 game releases.

This might've been one of the greatest years in Human history.

There's so many games that were released that Year, especially that Fall, that are first losers compared to Half Life 2.

Hilary Clinton's favorite modded game GTA: San Andreas, the aforementioned Halo 2. BURNOUT 3: Takedown which is the greatest console game ever released that year. I'm not even going to bother to check farther down the alphabetical list.

*checks*

Yep I'm still right.

And on the Master PC (snigger) we have the releases of Rome: Total War, World of Warcraft, Unreal Tournament 2004, Counter-Strike: Source, Far Cry and while they aren't even close to in the running for greatest PC Game of all time, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butchers Bay and Sid Meier's Pirates! were also incredibly awesome and the latter needs a re-release so I can romance some more Governors daughters. :sneaky:
 

Emperor Tippy

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The nostalgia glasses on some people here are thick enough to make the blind see.

As a PC title, Morrowind had far superior controls/UI design.

It's story was superior, its environmental design was better, its mechanics were both more varied and more interesting, its leveling system worked better.

In terms of modding, it had a more powerful and better construction kit.

Voice acting and graphics were the only things that Skyrim had on Morrowind.

And for graphics, well you mod those for both Skyrim and Morrowind anyways.
 

S'task

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The description of Half Life 2 as a 'flash in the pan' is extremely aberrant. Compare it to Halo 2 and I've met Halo-ites who somehow confused Halo 2 with Halo 3 on occasion.
This is a list of PC games, Halo is a console game and even when Halo was brand new PC FPSes were kicking it's ass when it came to graphics, controls, gameplay, and storytelling. Halo would never be considered for a list of best PC games... to use it as a point of comparison for Half Life is blatantly biasing the situation, it's basically putting up the gold medalist in the 100 yard dash from the special Olympics up against the gold medalist from the actual Olympics and noting that the not handicapped one is better.

You want to compare Half Life to other heavily story driven FPSes? Alright, go play the original Deus Ex and come back to me and pretend that Half Life or Half Life 2 even BEGINS to have the level and quality of storytelling that Deus Ex does. Deus Ex also has non-linear level design that was superior to anything in the FPS genre at the time (and even a lot/most modern FPS). While I'll grant Deus Ex's influence on gaming is perhaps more limited than many of the other titles put forward, it's a masterpiece of storytelling and design that I think stands on it's own. And heck, the original Deus Ex's ending was so influential, what with it's choose your own ending from three different types of kinda bad ends that Mass Effect 3 basically lifted it's entire ending options directly from it (no seriously, compare the original ending options to ME3 and then look at the ending options in Deus Ex and you'll get some serious deja vu, except in Deus Ex those endings didn't suck and entirely fit the theme of the story and setting, unlike ME3).

That said, perhaps I would grant that the ORIGINAL Half Life deserves to be on the list, as looking back while I think Half Life 2's influence on PC gaming has been fairly limited, the original Half Life ended up redefining huge chunks of the FPS landscape due to it's wide variety of mods (Counterstrike and Team Fortress being the two biggest names there).
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
If you are including an Elder Scrolls game, Morrowind blows Skyrim out of the water. Both before and after mods, and before mods I'm honestly not sure if any ES title should be on the list.

I think Morrowind and Skyrim are equal. That's why I listed them both in the same spot.

Morrowind has a very memorable, weird alien world. A conquered elven kingdom in a volcanic land with an ashen sky, with feuding clans. Warrior clans that build their villages inside giant crab shells. Eccentric wizards who live in giant mushroom towers. Dense populations living inside a bizzare mix of pyramids and Kowloon walled cities. Floating jellyfish monsters and stuff. It also has plenty of distinctive factions. It also has the most questing content in the series, to the point you're probably never going to do all of the quests on a single character. Where Morrowind falls flat is in the combat. It sucks. The only remotely fun playstyle is playing as a mage who is super jumping everywhere.

Skyrim doesn't have the really unique setting and aesthetics of Morrowind, but it is still very immersive. It's probably a little more immersive than Morrowind, with the stuff happening out in the world and the NPC schedules in the towns. Everything is voice acted. Has some memorable characters. A lot more music tracks than in Morrowind. Doesn't do anything terribly bad, just has a lot of "meh" like the factions. Combat isn't infuriating like in Morrowind, just meh.

I find the TES series to be rather tragic. Skyrim was clearly rushed out the door and unfinished (Civil War storyline, for example). It was a blockbuster, but the games industry took the wrong lessons from it, leading to the 2010s becoming the era of forgettable open world games. As big as TES was, it's bizzare how pretty much the only other immersive FPS sandbox RPG to come out was Kingdom Come Deliverance. At this point, Elder Scrolls VI probably won't be good and will disappoint. The company that made the beloved Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim games doesn't exist anymore.
 

Husky_Khan

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This is a list of PC games, Halo is a console game and even when Halo was brand new PC FPSes were kicking it's ass when it came to graphics, controls, gameplay, and storytelling. Halo would never be considered for a list of best PC games... to use it as a point of comparison for Half Life is blatantly biasing the situation, it's basically putting up the gold medalist in the 100 yard dash from the special Olympics up against the gold medalist from the actual Olympics and noting that the not handicapped one is better.

OMG I've said Halo is a Console game like a billion times in this thread already! Fuck it all... I give up on life. I'm going to play a Call of Duty game now.

*jumps out an airplane Call of Duty 1 style*

Fuck your closed doors Call of Duty!!!

Oh and yeah I actually looked it up, it's Call of Duty that tells you that you never have to open a locked door. Medal of Honor is the game that ended with be sitting on a train rolling away, listening to some stale NPC dialogue and watching some fuzzy explosions in the distance and thinking... Wait... that's the ending?

You want to compare Half Life to other heavily story driven FPSes? Alright, go play the original Deus Ex and come back to me and pretend that Half Life or Half Life 2 even BEGINS to have the level and quality of storytelling that Deus Ex does. Deus Ex also has non-linear level design that was superior to anything in the FPS genre at the time (and even a lot/most modern FPS). While I'll grant Deus Ex's influence on gaming is perhaps more limited than many of the other titles put forward, it's a masterpiece of storytelling and design that I think stands on it's own. And heck, the original Deus Ex's ending was so influential, what with it's choose your own ending from three different types of kinda bad ends that Mass Effect 3 basically lifted it's entire ending options directly from it (no seriously, compare the original ending options to ME3 and then look at the ending options in Deus Ex and you'll get some serious deja vu, except in Deus Ex those endings didn't suck and entirely fit the theme of the story and setting, unlike ME3).

I did play (or rather seen it played through lol) Deus Ex AFTER Half Life 2. I uhhh would disagree.

But since we're in a discussion where I think the Half Life series is some of the greatest games of all time compared with a "flash in the pan" and "barely passable shooter" I'm guessing our tastes in games is so vastly different as to be irreconcilable. :LOL:
 
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ParadiseLost

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At this point, Elder Scrolls VI probably won't be good and will disappoint.

While I hate to admit this because I don't like the games industries consolidation, Microsoft buying Bethesda will probably save the studio in the long run, because Microsoft is much more patient than Bethesda's former execs.

I also think Bethesda learned something from the failures of Fallout 76.
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
As a PC title, Morrowind had far superior controls/UI design.

Agreed. I liked the tactile feel of being able to see items in my inventory and dragging and dropping them. Also, the "made for TV" UI of Skyrim was pretty bad.

It's story was superior

Hard disagree. Morrowind's main story is terribly presented. You're told the story, and it's nothing to write home about. At least in Skyrim you actually get to be there for it. The rest of Morrowind had few memorable characters, like that thief cat lady (too bad you couldn't marry her), or that Telvanni wizard with his daughter-wives, or that one benevolent wizard, but that's it. The writing of the quests weren't really anything to write home about (beside's the cat lady's questline).

With Skyrim, the writing quality didn't really get worse. It's just that the subpar quality of it is more noticeable now that it is voice acted.

its environmental design was better

Hard disagree. Morrowind has stronger aesthetics, and the dungeons weren't just single corridors and felt more like actual places, but the Vyardenfell overworld was very boring. It was a very homogenous brown wasteland. Skyrim was much more varied, from the yellow plains of Whiterun, to the lush green forests of Falkreath, to the autumnal forests of Riften, to the rocky mountains of Markaarth, to the pleasant climate of Solitude, and to the snowy wastes of Windhelm.

its mechanics were both more varied and more interesting, its leveling system worked better.

Only good thing about Morrowind's mechanics was the custom spell making. Otherwise, no I did not think clicking a guy 20 times only to hit him once to be very fun. Character creation penalizes 90% of players for not knowing the progression of their build or what they are going to do or where they are going to go ahead of time. Combat just downright sucks until you tediously grind/train your skills up to the 50s at the bare minimum. Skyrim pruned too many skills such as speechcraft but at least it isn't unfun to play for first timers. You walk out of the intro and you're free to experiment and find what works for you. You can even change your playstyle half way through a playthrough and still do okay. It isn't until you start reaching like level 70 or something that Skyrim's level scaling starts to outpace you and the game starts becoming unplayable, but by that point you have probably done all of the content in the game.
 

Husky_Khan

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Also, I tried playing Skyrim once but lost interest like five or fifteen minutes in and never bothered playing it again because I found it so profoundly uninteresting. Plus I think I was scarred from playing Oblivion a fair bit back in the day and thinking of how absolutely obnoxious all of those Oblivion gates were. With that said I'm sure Skyrim is an amazing game, just not my cup of tea clearly. I just uhhhh... wanted to throw that out there before I go. 😁
 

Husky_Khan

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Sotnik
So another BRILLIANT way of finding the sixteen best games.., would be deducing the best games of each genre (RPG, Shooter, Strategy etc) and/or subgenre (RTS, Grand Strategy, 4X etc) and seeing what turns out.
 

Hlaalu Agent

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If you are including an Elder Scrolls game, Morrowind blows Skyrim out of the water. Both before and after mods, and before mods I'm honestly not sure if any ES title should be on the list.

Yes, this is probably one of the best games of all time.

Hard disagree. Morrowind's main story is terribly presented. You're told the story, and it's nothing to write home about. At least in Skyrim you actually get to be there for it. The rest of Morrowind had few memorable characters, like that thief cat lady (too bad you couldn't marry her), or that Telvanni wizard with his daughter-wives, or that one benevolent wizard, but that's it. The writing of the quests weren't really anything to write home about (beside's the cat lady's questline).

With Skyrim, the writing quality didn't really get worse. It's just that the subpar quality of it is more noticeable now that it is voice acted.

I don't think it was terrible at all, you actually had to engage with the world and the lore to actually get it. You weren't served the story on a spoon. Also da



Hard disagree. Morrowind has stronger aesthetics, and the dungeons weren't just single corridors and felt more like actual places, but the Vyardenfell overworld was very boring. It was a very homogenous brown wasteland. Skyrim was much more varied, from the yellow plains of Whiterun, to the lush green forests of Falkreath, to the autumnal forests of Riften, to the rocky mountains of Markaarth, to the pleasant climate of Solitude, and to the snowy wastes of Windhelm
.

I think you are wrong here, because I literally can drive to all those environments IRL. Nothing where I live like the folorn Sheogorad or Azura's Coast, or the Barren Ashlands or Molag Amur, nothing quite like the Swampy Bitter Coast or quite like the scrubby West Gash, or the alien-meets-familiar Ascadian Isles. It wasn't a homogenous brown wasteland, it was actually quite varied.

Only good thing about Morrowind's mechanics was the custom spell making. Otherwise, no I did not think clicking a guy 20 times only to hit him once to be very fun. Character creation penalizes 90% of players for not knowing the progression of their build or what they are going to do or where they are going to go ahead of time. Combat just downright sucks until you tediously grind/train your skills up to the 50s at the bare minimum. Skyrim pruned too many skills such as speechcraft but at least it isn't unfun to play for first timers. You walk out of the intro and you're free to experiment and find what works for you. You can even change your playstyle half way through a playthrough and still do okay. It isn't until you start reaching like level 70 or something that Skyrim's level scaling starts to outpace you and the game starts becoming unplayable, but by that point you have probably done all of the content in the game.

What playstyle? Stealth Archer for the umpteenth time?
 

ShadowsOfParadox

Well-known member
What playstyle? Stealth Archer for the umpteenth time?
If you are doing Stealth Archer you have enough multipliers you don't even need to do too much Alchemy-Enchanting loop abuse to keep up post lvl 70

BTW, if you do enough of that loop you can actually break the game and oneshot literally everything even without being a Stealth Archer.
So another BRILLIANT way of finding the sixteen best games.., would be deducing the best games of each genre (RPG, Shooter, Strategy etc) and/or subgenre (RTS, Grand Strategy, 4X etc) and seeing what turns out.
Hmmm... For 4X I think I'd nominate Age of Wonders: Planetfall, it's the only one I've ever played that didn't run into either of "I just got to the fun part and it's over?" or "I won this game 50 turns ago and it's another 100 before I'll actually win, Imma dip."

EDIT: speaking of which, due to Humble Bundle I have an extra copy of Age of Wonders: Planetfall, and no one to give it to, so feel free to PM me if you want it.
 
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Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Hmmm maybe I'll just make a new thread where we can each individually and objectively share our irrefutable top sixteen PC games and link back here to foment the discussion.

And 16 games because unlike 10 or 20 it makes for nice future tournament style profiling. ;)
Before that, don't we need a tournament to settle on the top sixteen genres for the PC games to be in?
 

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