SB Recommends PC Games

More delicious recommendations from the selectbutton community!

The IBM-compatible personal computer has a long and storied history as a piece of gaming hardware. It is the bastion of North American game design, and its games often reflect a less arcadey, more patient, approach. The big PC divide is between MS-DOS, and MS-Windows (though this, of course, has various versions, and various compatibility issues steaming from that), though the rapid pace at which hardware is updated will cause problems for those wanting to play the newest releases.

Steam has become an incredibly popular way to purchase (digital copies of) Windows-compatible software, often at exceptional prices. Good Old Games (GOG) has been releasing updated, digital, versions of DOS games compatible with modern systems, while emulators such as DOSBox, and ScummVM allow people to run their older copies of games.

• 8Bit Killer - download
  • The Blueberry Hill: A Doom-clone with a NES paintjob, and level design in a somewhat similar vein.

• Another World / Out of this World (NA) / Outer World (JP) (also on: 3DO; Amiga; Apple II; Atari ST; GBA; Mac; Mega Drive/CD; SNES)
  • diplo: I don't know that it's that Another World is not all that fun to play. I just never could get ahold of anything except “it's cool that this was made by one guy and that it's 'cinematic?'” The look is delivered with clarity and purpose but it's a sterile and uninviting (not even in the “invitingly uninviting” way) graphic embodiment to me. Actually that's probably the main thing that just doesn't make me care: Another World is a game about a world, briskly and mysteriously experienced, but I just don't care about that world or what it suggests because the aesthetic filter is so…tidy and bald.
  • remote: Another World is still a wonderful distillation of videogame trial & error that never allows you to feel fully in control. It embraces the idea that you've been whisked off to some perilous alien world where you only learn what awaits on the next screen (or sequence of screens) by means of often gruelling repetition, and you survive only as you could in a videogame providing you with infinite lives/retries. And once you've figured out what to do, the game's cinematic flow comes into relief… always within the dynamic of a puzzle game in motion. It demands patience, precision (or as much as is allowed), and above all persistence, but its atmosphere is immensely rewarding. And like Bennett says, it just feels really good in 2011. The GOG-released version is awesome.

• Arcanum
  • Tulpa: The CRPG I replay every couple of years. Something about it makes it feel like a real place with characters that react to you and your actions. Flawed in a lot of ways but if you can overlook shoddy mechanics and some areas with an unfinished feel, you will find a lot to love.
  • Tulpa: You know how Fallout has that attitude of wandering around doing anything and building a reputation for yourself that effects how the world reacts to you? Arcanum does that too, and it's got followers with personalities that will just up and leave the party if you do enough things to piss them off and dialogue trees so deep and intertwined with your character and how you play them that there are conversations I have only seen once. It's been fan-patched so much that everything originally obnoxious about the game is gone (except the terrible combat system but you're playing a late-90s style CRPG, you're probably not playing for the combat.)
    The central conflict of the setting is a magic vs. technology thing where there is no Biowarean third-option-that-satisfies-everyone. The societies in the game are defined by shades of grey and you are at liberty to do anything you want. The game will not stop you from breaking the 'main quest' and you will still be able to continue even if the route to success becomes significantly less obvious.

• Ageod's American Civil War: The Blue and the Gray
  • T.: Sunk stupid amounts of time into this last summer, despite not being so crazy about unarmored warfare or the civil war. Huge scope of campaigns and amount of research as compared to any other game covering the period, and quite pretty too.

• Alex Adventure - download
  • The Blueberry Hill: Sometimes it feels like a good version of a 90s shareware plaformer, perhaps it's the curious colour choices in some spots; often it feels more open than it is; and always it's my favourite PC member of the genre.

• Bastion (also on: XBLA)
  • Kitten ClanClan: Magnificent Action-RPG that oozes style. The soundtrack is an excellent, if bizarre mix of bluegrass with more electronic music, and the result is something you'd be damned to miss out on. Game is notable for having a gruff, dynamic narrator that creates a unique experience. The difficulty has a few balancing issues, but it's largely negligible to the overall composure of the game, which is delightful.

• Betrayal at Krondor
  • bleak: A turn-based RPG with a flat-rendered 3D world navigation system and an intensely difficult combat system. Under the hood you'll find enough numbers to satisfy the nerd within you, though they are by and large unnecessary to pay attention to. Explore a volatile fantasy world rife with disease, racism, and social unrest and get the crap kicked out of you! I have yet to beat this game but I have never regretted playing it.

• Big Red Racing
  • The Blueberry Hill: A racing game with several vehicle types that's a real good time over a network. Spent a lot of time playing this at school when I was supposed to be studying computer animation. A choice I do not regret.

• Braid (also on: XBLA, PS3) - forum thread
  • boojiboy7: An amazingly solid platformer with a wonderfully explored time-manipulation mechanic and beautiful artwork. Ignore all the text, though, for your own good.
  • gatotsu2501: That warning's no joke, incidentally. The sophomoric obnoxiousness of the writing pissed me off so much that I actually enjoyed the (fairly inspired) gameplay a lot less as a result. The dismissive label of “pretentiousness” is tossed around a lot these days, but Braid works itself ragged to earn it.
  • Kitten ClanClan: Seconding what Booji has already said, but offering a counter-opinion on the text: I found the game's plot to be very interesting. Its method of storytelling is one that I believe cleverly implores gaming mechanics to tell, and I also believe that the ending of the game is quite thought-provoking.
  • boojiboy7 (again): Man, if you think text blocks that could be written in any number of freshman level creative writing courses are a good way to tell a story, that is a problem. The game could've actually told the exact same story without those text dumps, and would've been much better for it.

• Breath of Fire IV / Breath of Fire IV: The Unfading Ones (JP) (also on: PlayStation, PSN)
  • Dark Age Iron Savior: basically it doesn't feel the same as the previous three games or the fifth game but more like something that would happen if you took Xenogears, stripped it into it's component parts, and then tried to make a new game out of just the positive elements, but the only guiding principles you had are vague descriptions of the previous Breath of Fires and hours spent looking at screenshots of Chinese DOS & Windows RPGs on Mobygames. It is rigid, aimless, beautiful, chunky, mesmerizing, grating.
    It has great towns that are a pain to navigate and have cute NPCs, sometimes with their own unique little sprites just because they are a person being in a place.
    Every 5-20 minutes the game will delight you in some small and joyful little way and it will constantly endear you over every flaw you run into, but when you stop playing it for a while and someone mentions it or you otherwise think back to how it was, you'll kind of shrug and be all “it was okay I guess”. You may make fun of elements that seemed totally pleasant while you were playing, and struggle to recall what made you keep playing for as long as you did. But…something did make you keep playing…
    The game has two regular battle themes and two regular boss themes, and they change depending on whether you're in the more European-style Western countries or the more Oriental-style Eastern empire. Until a significant amount of progress has been made, these themes and areas are separated by two distinct storylines, and as the overarching plot develops, the player will begin to perceive the forces that cause these two fates to be intertwined.
    Also the song A Raging Emperor's Banquet (that's a final boss theme, though).

• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
  • P1d40n3 : It's MW! A crunchy and well-paced campaign, enjoyable multiplayer…what's not to love? Consensus puts the best difficulty at Hardened; Veteran degenerates into memorization of enemy placement (no Halo style dynamic combat here; one mistake is death), and everything else is far to easy. That being said, Mile High Club (Epilogue mission) on Veteran is the providence of the Elite, and almost worth the price of admission.

• Cave Story / Doukutsu Monogatari (JP) (Also on: PSP, Wii, GP2X, Xbox)
  • robotdell: It's free. It's fantastic. It's Cave Story: a “metroidvania” with true purpose!

• Cho Ren Sha 68k (Also on Sharp X68000)
  • Loki Laufeyson: Freeware shooting game that is excellent in every way.

• Crysis (also on: PSN, XBLA)
  • gatotsu2501: Mashes up some of the best ideas from Halo and Metal Gear Solid 3, and sprinkles in a pinch of Half-Life 2 for good measure. Not as good as any of those games individually, but the combination and creative implementation of borrowed elements makes for a worthwhile experience. The last third of the game inexplicably does away with the wonderful open-endedness and tactical variety available up to that point and becomes a typical linear run-and-gun shooter. Unless your PC is a fucking powerhouse, you might be better off with one of the downloadable console versions.

• Daggerfall
  • CubaLibre: The first truly robust entry into Bethesda's famously free-form Elder Scrolls series. A little too big for its britches, but so brassy and full of verve that you'll forgive it. Totally inconsistent aesthetic makes it goofy and flamboyant. Curiously its primitive mouse-based first-person melee combat is superior to later, more technically advanced entries in the series.

• Dark Sector (also on: PS3; 360)
  • Dracko: I like Dark Sector more than Gears of War. Think it got a bad rap since it came out around the same time. Contrariwise to CliffyB's power fantasy, it's got class and intrigue, and the close-quarters combat feels chaotic, gruesome and meaty as opposed to methodical. Reminds me a lot of Tsutomu Nihei's more organically inspired stuff (not to mention his [thing] for Eastern European architecture). Following that comparison, the body horror elements of the title resonate well with the character themes at play in a way that brings to mind Cronenberg and — I think this is the influence of the members of Epic responsible for Unreal — creatures appear strange and exotic instead of just plain horrid for the sake of it.

• Dawn of War
  • TORUMASUTA: Dawn of War will haunt me in my dreams, because I didn't include it, not even in the Honorable Mentions because I felt having Homeworld by Relic meant I shouldn't put in another Relic game. I've played more Dawn of War than any other RTS, and that's because it “makes sense” to me in a way no other RTS does; you're not fighting for gold mines, you're fighting for LOCATIONS ON A MAP, and instead of sacrificing units when they get to low health, you need to get those fuckers out of the fight and let them reinforce their squad or else you lose a hell of a lot of opportunity cost. The fact that there are Space Communists, Junk Metal Joke Faction Frat Boyz, and Nuns With Flamethrowers as just three of the awesome factions doesn't hurt, either.

• Deus Ex
  • Tulpa: How could we have a PC recommendations thread without Deus Ex? It has a lot of shortcomings and imperfections but it gets away by being one of the smartest games I've ever played.

• Fallout
  • CubaLibre: Poster boy for the successfully executed free-form RPG, TES and Ultima be damned. Fallout 3 is a pathetic wreck; 2 is still a great game, and features some welcome refinements to the first game's engine, but is too grandiose and squanders its grimy post-apocalyptic atmosphere on setpieces and in-jokes. It also responds less well to player meddling in the world and offers him fewer solutions to most problems, making the first game superior.

• Fire King (also on: C64)
  • kthorjensen: Fire King is like Gauntlet: The RPG before Diablo was and needs to be rediscovered.

• Forget-Me-Not (also on: iOS, Mac) - download
  • JChastain: Forget-Me-Not is really fucking good.
  • galaxyghost: iPhone game of the year for me.

• Frogatto & Friends - download forum thread
  • Dark Age Iron Saviour: It's one of those independent games that is so good that you find yourself marvelling at how petty your complaints are. Every time I think of this game the boss theme gets stuck in my head. It helps that the first boss fight is sprung upon you so cleanly.
  • Take It Sleazy: The music is really spectacular. I played all the way through and I even kind of want to mess around with the Frogatto Markup Language to see if I can make something with this. This is the kind of game I've been waiting for, just a “full course” old-school platformer, informed by old-school design, with very little waste. It's charming and executed wonderfully. The ending is pretty neat as well. Probably my favorite PC game of the year so far.
  • Dracko: Frogatto is the most relatable platformer character in ages: He oversleeps, is unemployed and is a frog. :(
  • Broco: The physics also feel a little off (why do I need momentum to cling to a wall?), there are difficulty spikes, and as Touran points out there are too many attacks that dilute the core tongue mechanic. Dunno, the art here is great but I think the game design still needs a bit more polish and thinking through (which maybe it will get, since it looks still in active development).
  • glossolalia: I'm mostly just impressed with the graphics and music and enemy design I guess. At twenty minutes in I agree it feels like there are too many mechanics that were put in because they were cool in another platformer, not because they really add anything to this one. or at least the level design doesn't really do anything interesting with them so far. I feel like it could become/someone could do something really great with this though.

• From Dust (also on: XBLA, PSN)
  • Kitten ClanClan: Eric Chahi, creator of Another World/Out of This World and Heart of Darkness created this God Sim masterpiece. While it's extraordinarily hard to recommend “in general,” fans of Populous and kids who grew up with a sandbox should consider this essential playing. The game is basically just moving dirt, water and lava around to sustain and protect a tribe you will eventually need to move to an objective, but it's gorgeous to behold and a delight to play. There's not really anything just like it.

• Galshell: Blood Red Skies
  • Loki Laufeyson: Decent horizontally scrolling bullet hell shooter with beautiful graphics and music. Possibly not for the squeamish, though. Freeware.

• Geneforge 5: Overthrow
  • T.: vogel's masterpiece and easily on level with arcanum (better combat and more reactivity, lesser writing and aesthetics, equal creativity and thoroughness of world design)

• Glum Buster - forum thread
  • wourme: A charming and atmospheric indie exploration game.

• Half-Life (also on: PS2) recommended mods
  • Tulpa: Whether or not you like it, this game transformed the shooter genre. Every shooter that has come out since has been a response to Half-Life. It also had the greatest mod scene (I should fill out the mod list with Half Life mods)

• Half-Life: Uplink - forum thread

• Half-Life 2 (also on: 360, Mac, PS3, XBox) - forum thread forum thread forum thread forum thread | mods
  • boojiboy7: While I don't like this game one bit (aside from a few small moments), what I don't like about it has forced me to think about what I do like in games. For that, it's a worthwhile game for even me to examine.

• Hammerfight - forum thread
  • Ronnoc: […] after Tetris, it is my favorite game.
  • antitype: The effect you get when you're swinging a hammer around and you slam an opponent into a wall, or they simply shatter on impact, the effect is actually pretty satisfying. I've scarcely played any games that provide such direct control over both the movement of your avatar (the little bucket-copter thing) and its weapon, particularly with the way they're joined in Hammerfight. (On that note, well, I don't own a Wii, so this is pretty novel to me.)
  • wourme: A friend of mine kept going on about how great it is […] my friend was right about how great it is. The game mostly consists of flying around in your steam-powered flying machine and rotating your mouse to swing hammers, swords, and various weapons on chains. It takes some practice to get used to the physics, and you have to adjust your technique based on weight and other factors. But it's a good design—you really feel the crunch when smashing things.

• Hard Reset
  • CubaLibre: This game is pretty great. It's quite tough, and the end-of-level scoring system is kind of stupid, but you can just ignore it and poke around for all the secrets. Almost all the weapons are useful and the upgrades are meaningful. Pretty great run-n-gun, a rarity these days. Also it's cyberpunk and the plot is some eastern European unfollowable nonsense, so it gets points for that.
  • Mr. Mechanical: I've been taking my time with it because I don't want it to end.

• Hero Core - download forum thread
  • eskaibo: man if Hero Core had an option to switch autofire off when you respawn it'd probably be the game of the decade
  • Broco: As far as I'm concerned, this is the best indie Metrovania (bulletvania? metroshmup?) yet. It's challenging without feeling cheap. All the boss battles have a dynamic, always-different quality, which is the gold standard for well-designed bosses. The exploration is bound mostly by your skill and character power instead of by arbitrary barriers. The plot is just enough to give the game its own distinctive character (it reminds me of Thexder) but is otherwise minimal — in general, I felt Hero Core values my time. The focus on precision targeting of enemy cores is refreshing — it adds a focus on actual shooting which has become unusual in modern bullet-hell shmups, which usually give you such a broad beam that you only need to think about dodging. And it just has some great ideas, like the final zone also acting as a Star World-style hub, and the random boss that hunts you.
  • CubaLibre: A kind of Metroid 2 without all the frustration, but still retaining a lot of the mystery. And also bullet hell.

• Hyperspeed
  • Bennett: Like SC2, only in 3D and better, and you get to go to the engine room and upgrade and repair your systems with rare and exotic components.

• Jetpack - download forum thread
  • RT-55J: This is my favorite game. Basically it's just Lode Runner with a jetpack, which makes it superior in just about every way imaginable (note: I have yet to play Lode Runner)
  • thesycophant: I played the ever-Christing shit out of this game when I was a kid. We only ever had the shareware version, and I constructed the one level I was allowed to save in the editor with the greatest love and care. If only I still had it!

• Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (also on: 360, PS3) - forum thread
  • Rudie: Okay, maybe I am retarded for games set in east asia. I still liked this game a lot more than either Gears. I think the level design is fantastic for encouraging co-op flanking maneuvers. It has two levels that I had been wanting to see in action movies forever. It is an excellent 5 hour affair that I have now replayed several times over, just because I enjoy it that much.

• King of Dragon Pass
  • T.: tulpa will vouch. great variety of events and attention paid to the different possible outcomes/scenarios (and the lore) + lovely painted everything

• La La Land (series) - download (via Auntie Pixelante)

• La Mulana - download forum thread

• Lemmings 2: The Tribes (also on: Acorn; Amiga; Atari ST; Game Boy; FM Towns; Mega Drive; SNES)
  • Bennett: It's a lot less repetitive than Lemmings, and it has more charm. A good sequel. Not sure which version to recommend, probably PC by 1993.

• Little Big Adventure

• Mass Effect 3 (also on: 360, PS3)
  • Felix: This game helped to remind me how little leeway there is in my personal evaluation spectrum between “not worth my time” and “pretty fantastic.” I ignored the first two thinking that they were shlocky, awkward Bioware pseudo-RPGs with wooden combat and dialogue, then after everyone got excited about the third I thought I'd give them a look. Turned out that I couldn't stand either, and I seem to be the only person who feels that way yet really likes the third game. Level design is way tightened up (no more nook-and-cranny upgrades and hacking minigames), pacing is better, combat finally feels like it'd be passable without an RPG attached to it, and the multiplayer is (bafflingly!) compelling and deep. It's still unmistakably Bioware, but it's successful, satisfying Bioware – like KotOR. For maximum enjoyment, I'd recommend spoilering the first two games for yourself, watching YouTube videos of some of their high points, and downloading an ME2 savefile that corresponds to the decisions you think you would've made to import into ME3.

• Mirror's Edge (also on: 360, PS3) - forum thread
  • drobe: It's a game that really tries to convince you that you're running along a mile-long A4 drawing beautiful calligraphy with wallruns and rolls. At times it actually feels like that, but it usually ends up feeling a lot like riding a runaway train while being chased by an even larger, angrier runaway train. The construction site was quite fantastic, I think.

• Morrowind
  • CubaLibre: Daggerfall all growed up. A much more serious game, but believably so, due in large part to the constricting of focus. Vvardenfall is a richly historied island dotted with the layered architectures of distinct, thankfully-non-Tolkienesque cultures. It's a bit plodding and the combat sort of C-grade but don't let that stop you.

• Mount&Blade: Warband - forum thread

• Nahlakh
  • T.: Another one that opens with the ambush of the [player characters]. Meshes the world design and lovely CGA graphics of ultima v with a detailed combat system influenced by the wizard's crown and gurps (locational damage! no exp!)

• Noctis IV - download

• The Orange Box (also on: 360, PS3)

• Oubliette (also on: C64)
  • T.: oubliette! huge variety of classes, monsters, spells. stupidly hard and broken. it's lovely!!

• Pirates! Gold
  • tulpa: The best in 2011 way to play Pirates! is to go with the 1993 Pirates! Gold remake (probably run in Dosbox) which manages to be as soulful as the original while being much more accessible.

• Plants vs. Zombies (also on: DSiWare, PSN, XBLA, iOS)
  • Kitten ClanClan: A charming take on the Tower Defense genre that managed to make me overcome my dislike of it. Plants vs. Zombies offers a startlingly large amount of content and a lengthy “story mode,” as well as simple, but addicting mechanics. Serious strategy enthusiasts might find themselves a little bored, however.

• Pools of Darkness (also on: Mac; Amiga; PC98)
  • T.: absurdly difficult and unbalanced high-level 1e combat against the minions of bane fought in perfectly designed dungeons like the depths of the underdark and the sleeping body of a god. the genre's ruthless and stone-faced peak

• Portal

• Portal 2 (also on: 360, PS3)
  • gatotsu2501: New copies of PS3 version come with download code for PC version and are cross-compatible for co-op/achievements, so might as well get that if it's an option.

• Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame (also on: Mac; SNES)
  • Bennett: Didn't settle for just adding a world and a story to Prince of Persia. Some awesome twists and epiphanies. I love epiphanies in gaming, they are very rare.

• Pyro II

• Ragnorok / Valhalla (EU) - download
  • vamos: The first proper roguelike I ever played (ignoring TJ&E as I wouldn't realise that until years later) and the only one I've ever beaten. An intriguing game based on Norse mythology, which is a great introduction to roguelikes due to nice graphical interface, reasonable difficulty curve.

• Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
  • Loki Laufeyson: Charming and fun action rpg/haggling sim with a ton of post-game content, and characters that are actually cute, as opposed to the current trend of simpering, useless little girls currently plaguing Japanese cartoons and videogames.

• SimCity 2000
  • CubaLibre: Perfect marriage of complexity with manageability makes this still the best entry in the series. A sandbox classic. Also notable for its clean, hi-rez pixel presentation, a joy to look at even today.

• SkyNET / The Terminator: SkyNET (EU)
  • CubaLibre: Bethesda's attempt at an FPS using the clunky Daggerfall engine, with a Terminator license. Also features vehicles, more or less a first in the genre. Strangely explorable, like the much later Unreal. Really imparts the dread of being hunted by relentless machines through an expansive postapocalyptic wasteland. A good candidate for how limited sprinkles of “sandbox” principles can liven up a more linear genre when used with restraint. Shooting itself is hella weird though.

• SkyRoads
  • tulpa: This game is probably the most meditative platformer.

• Space Funeral - download
  • costel: This is easily one of the most stylish and demented indie games I have ever played. It's like a really demented Mother meets Monster Party.

• Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (also on: Amiga; Mac; PC-98)
  • Take It Sleazy: Despite being a Sierra adventure game and thus, obtuse and unfair, the charm and wit really do make up for it. Sharp meta-humor, distinctive artwork, and the greatest voice acting of it's day.

• Spelunky - download forum thread forum thread
  • dark steve: This game is not only a viable platform/arcade/roguelike hybrid, but it's gorgeous (screens online don't justify the full extent of visual detail) and the the level of fine tuning suggests a game that's been refined for years (even though the first release was only in December). Go play this right now.
  • alice: like 200 deaths in and this game still finds new ways to kill me.
  • Mr Peckerston: And yeah, this game is amazing. Everything interacts with everything else in such a roguelike-ish manner; are so many creative ways to set off those arrow traps, steal from shopkeepers, lure enemies into spiked totems and so on.
  • alice: wow, 350 deaths in and the game is still finding new ways to kill me.
  • vamos: The world definitely needs more games like this - short, massively replayable, and full of secrets.
  • L: Final appraisal: twice as good as Eternal Daughter.

• Squad Battles: Soviet-Afghan War
  • T.: I own and adore all but one of the squad battles series. simple enough tb hex wargames pretty much as you'd expect from John Tiller, but that explore unusual and very cool settings and battles (such as this one, or the soviet invasion of Finland, the Spanish civil war, French colonialists in Vietnam, etc.)

• Star Control 2
  • Broco: GOTY 1992 for me as well. But, I agree with your criticisms. Ships have jerky turning behavior, making it easier to over/undershoot targets, and the camera likes to unpredictably flip to a totally different perspective. SC3 made both of these things gradual and smooth, and that's the one place where it's an improvement over SC2. But the SC2 way just takes some getting used to and it's fun, in fact the jerky turning becomes part of the tactics of it (you can squeeze between enemy turn increments).
    I don't think SC2 combat is particularly “unfair” either, I'm not sure what you're complaining about exactly there. Sometimes the battle starts with both ships very close to each other, but you just have to be aware of that possibility and you can take advantage of it as much as the enemy can.
    Aside from these details though, SC2 still stands up really well as an ambitious game successfully fusing together many different scopes in a way that still today few games either try or succeed at doing. You've got freeform exploration, RPG development, excellent sci-fi writing, and live-action battles, all cohering together to give you the whole awesome space-captain experience. It's like Mount & Blade in space and with a well-written story.

• Star Wars: Dark Forces
  • Sniper Honeyviper: Yet another mid-nineties Doom clone, but one with its own engine, an expansive and ridiculously awesome arsenal (even moreso than Duke 3D), creative level design, and copious Star Wars fanservice. Also on PS1.

• Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
  • Sniper Honeyviper: This time around, you've got a lightsaber and chunky Tomb Raider-style polygons. The levels are gigantic and open-ended, but kind of unfair in parts, and Force Jumping is floaty as hell. The only way to raise your “dark side” affinity is by killing innocents. Still a fun game, and I prefer it to its Raven-developed sequels (which came after Episode 1, coincidence?). There's some well-produced FMV cutscenes with real actors who actually know how to act. They could almost pass for a Star Wars TV special if spliced together.

• Stonekeep - forum thread
  • bleak: An excellent real-time first person grid-based hack'n'slash dungeon crawler with full voice acting (rob paulsen is in there), decent puzzles, meaty yet optional RPG elements, lots of secrets to find, and a difficulty that delivers the goods without being overly pressing. Strategy and tactics are required. Has a sort of easy mode accessed through in-game means. Very considerate, tight, and satisfying dungeon adventure, and it maintains a great air of levity throughout.

• Stunts / 4D Sports Driving / 4D Driving (also on: Amiga; PC-98)
  • vamos: I played the DOS version. It has a brilliant track editor with loads of weird glitches / exploits. Hours of fun setting up tracks that launched the car high into the sky.

• Super Meat Boy (also on: XBLA) - forum thread
  • Rudie: 300 levels of delicious platforming! The only sad thing is it has the Newgrounds humor. The old game references, the bonus characters, and the physics make me forgive that though!
  • Kitten ClanClan: One of my top 15 games of all time, Super Meat Boy is an astoundingly well-designed, but challenging platformer focused intensely upon finishing levels as quickly and perfectly as possible. Homages many classic series and independent games without becoming derivative. Newground aesthetic felt initially off-putting, but became very charming over time.

• Syndicate (also on: 3DO; Acorn; Amiga; CD32; Jaguar; Mac; Mega Drive; PC-98; SNES;) - HG101 article
  • Bennett: Easily the best Peter Molyneux game, and the model for a whole line of Western-made realtime tactics games.
  • The Blueberry Hill: You're best going for the Syndicate Plus version (Amiga/PC), which includes the expansion American Revolt.

• Thief
  • Tulpa: Can you believe this came out the same month as Half Life? Here's a game with a great aesthetic, amazing sound design, powerful AI, and the best stealth mechanics ever.

• Thief II: The Metal Age
  • JoeX111: Less undead monster nonsense and more breaking and entering and sneaking past guards, including an awesome level where you burglarize several homes as you hop across rooftops towards your REAL objective. Also: Steampunk robots.
  • Dracko: It's definitely worth playing [in addition to Thief. The first game wasn't entirely certain about itself being a stealth game whereas its sequel is totally confident and even has larger playgrounds to fool around in, as well as maintaining the same kind of creepy vibe the original had with its own moments of surrealism.

• Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (also on: Amiga; Apple II; Atari; Atari ST; C64; FM Towns; MSX; Master System; NES; PC-88/98)
  • Bennett: still after 26 years, the only game with an interesting take on ethics. (and I do ethics for a living, so this is my professional opinion)

• Ultima VII (use Exult emulator)
  • Bennett: Probably the best western RPG ever. Although it's true the combat is a weakness, this is true of all western RPGs, and it is completely made up for by the adventuring aspect. A world full of mystery and interactivity. This game stands so far above all the others of 1992, both then and now, that I'm not voting for anything else.

• Unreal
  • CubaLibre: The spiritual ancestor of Metroid Prime, this FPS features believably otherworldly environments sprinkled with texts left behind by previous occupants and explorers. It's also damn tight and has a great array of multifunctional weaponry, something that was refined in Unreal Tournament and its successors at the expense of leaving the compelling atmosphere of the single-player game behind. Unreal 2 is a piece of shit.

• Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun (also on Mac)
  • Victoria: Revolutions (expansion)
    • T.: what is this my third paradox game listed lol

• Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (also on: Mac; PlayStation)
  • The King: Wing Commander IV is one of the better games in the series (if not the best), and the DVD version really is a stunning improvement over the 4 CD version.

• Wing Commander: Privateer
  • tulpa: Should be obvious, Like the halfway point between Elite and Star Control 2 but with Wing Commander physics.

• X-Com: UFO Defense
  • | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE |: X-COM: UFO Defense is one of the best games I've ever played. Perhaps it's the best, perhaps it's in my top 3; it's kinda hard to tell when you get to that point. The thing is that it's so good you can't even compare it to anything else that's out there. Sure you can call it a turn-based squad thingamajig and that's a category that has other games in it. The experience of playing it is unique though. And I'm not even speaking nostalgically here. I played it for the first time around 6-8 months ago [so, 2011]. It's not a game you have to get used to or can only appreciate in the context of its release, “way back when.” It's like, hand a guy who's never played a videogame before a Gameboy with Tetris or a DOS PC with DOOM or Master of Orion and that shit's gonna work. The game's gonna work its magic.

• Yume Nikki - direct download forum thread
  • L: It takes a concept that I can only find sparingly in other games — in this case, the deliberate refusal to establish the usual 'game patterns' by which the player's analytical mind can gain some purchase on the game world and its design, and the subtle, gradual sinisterness that results — and brings it to its apogee. I can't really think of any game that rebuffs the player's pattern and structure senses, while simultaneously possessing a bare, incomplete, uncanny semblance of structure that seems to perpetually fail to be completed or comprehended. (I refer not to the game's “collect effects” pattern that sits above the entire game world and provides the player with a meagre impetus to explore, but the many incomplete sub-patterns inside it.)

• SB Recommends Platform Independent / Browser-based Games
• DOSBox - DOS emulator.
• SB Hookup: Steam Friends
• good sorta old-ish PC games - Recommendations from the forums.
• welcome to PC gaming - Recommendations from the forums.
• The Indie Games Depository - Recommendations from the forums.