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[sambojin]

nevermind.....

[Owlga]

I still really like the original Xcom. The new one is cool but there's just something nice about the original. I tried long war for the new one but it just feels like it muddles everything from the two and somehow only keeps the worst parts, so... Original plus mods for me.

Plus Marathon, any of that series and even some of the unofficial sequel mods are amazing. Gunner-chan still prefers doom but I know what's the REAL great old fps.

[Arcvasti]

Wizardry [The first one]

I loved this game when I was a kid. I was completely incapable of beating the game or surviving past the first level without cheating, but I loved it. Its still really good and I'm still really bad at it. Some things[Ex:War] never change.

Nethack

Ditto here. Probably one of the first games I played, ever, when I was about 6. I did eventually get an ascension on an explore mode character, but I've still never won it properly[Although I've gotten close once or twice since].

Master of Magic

Civilization except cooler. Something in this game just WORKS. Like, you're a wizard oozing arcane power from every orifice. You've got hordes of dragons and paladins or whatever. And you want to go kick the ass of all the other wizards. And its really fun. Every so often, I run the game again[Always as a custom wizard with the Rjak icon, because I love that icon] and go a-wrecking, usually with Gnolls.

Colonisation

Civilization 2 except colonial. Its main gimmick was that the whole allocating farmers/scientists/whatever in town was more detailed. You had individual colonists who were independent units and expert versions of each skill who did their job better. And you got random immigrants from your home port in Europe who ranged from really good[Expert farmers] to ungodly useless[Indentured servants]. I think eventually, in the game I won in, I stacked 99 free colonists I had no other use for in one square for most of the game before arming them with muskets and horse and sending them to Zerg Rush the Brits in the inevitable Revolutionary War I started. I loved managing all the little colonists and filling all the jobs with maxed skill people. Honestly, this game is why I got into DF in the first place.

[LordBucket]

I still really like the original Xcom.

First one was the only one I liked, but it always seemed to me that the most fun part of the game was everything except the tactical combat part. And that was most of the game.

Wizardry [The first one]

Agreed. I got the most mileage out of the first one. Though you kind of had to play the macintosh version. The PC and console versions of it were fairly bad.

Nethack

I could never deal with how completely arbitrary and random Nethack was. The entire game was designed around simply knowing an endless list of nonsensical gimmicks, the majority of which you could never reasonably be expected to figure out from actually playing the game. It was like the worst of those old sierra "click on stuff" games in roguelike form except you couldn't beat it by trial and error clicking on pixels. You had to consult a guide.

Master of Magic

I realize this is a clasic, and yes...I played it at least as much as anyone. But it always really annoyed me that the most effective way to play the game was to completely ignore magic and simply build paladins. For most caster designs, magic was a minor little bonus that helped you a tiny little bit most of the time. Apart from a couple of useful early game summons and the 11 book life magic minmax stuff, most spells just weren't useful and required way too much effort to do anything with. If you were capable of using magic effectively, odds were that you'd already "won" and were just tinkering with things. It was a fun game, but it was actually very badly designed. The fun gameplay styles weren't effective at all and the effective stuff tended to be terribly dull. So much of the game could be summarized with "this sounds awesome, but there's really no point in ever using this."

Recipe for beating MoM: mostly ignore magic except to convert to gold to buy buildings faster, get paladins, kill everybody, done.

That was always disappointing in a game that was supposed to be about magic.

[Itnetlolor]

The classic Xcom games still rock (and with Final Mod in OpenXcom, it's even crazier this time around. Even Beginner is a challenge, or difficulty scaling by score means I'm quite the foe).

Starcon 2 is always a classic. Especially Melee Mode. Been many a fun and ‼fun‼ round against my siblings, and with key-jamming rule in play (gotta love shared keyboards), it added to the challenge at times, and was an annoying move to pull (add more rules, and call it a combat move. Limited uses.).

Atomic Tetris. Basically, Tetris with powerups that can aid or destroy you when you're up against another player.

X-Wing and Tie Fighter are still classics for me. Managed to beat Tie Fighter rather quickly, and probably one of the first games I actually put some effort into collecting achievemenets (at least the training/proving grounds badges and simulator medals).

Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries was just full of fun missions, and had a pretty decent training/tutorial mission intro. The combat arena was always an awesome mission, and pretty difficult, but a prison escape from a weak hovercraft (and destroying a mech's legs or few as you escape).

Back before VR and Hololens, the Sega Master System had 3-D games (and pretty good 3-D while at it, combined with the blaster (Zillion-style with ours back then) and some cool games for both). They did well, and used it as a good mechanic in other cases.

So many more...

[sambojin]

Nethack

You had to consult a guide.

Yep. Nethack got stupid. Honestly, when you can "w"ear, "p"ut-on, "q"uaff, or just "u"se an item, you know someone is going for NH levels of dickery on you for the extra buttons. Then giving basic stuff amazing unexplained options that could end a game that took you hours to play, they're going for NetHack bullshitery. It's pretty much the world today, with reports and research, in a game. You may as well gey a lawyer, no matter how easy the license agreement is. What a crock of shit. It even got dumber than basic itemization. Why was Diablo 2 a breath of fresh air, even with cube guides and runewords? NetHack dickery and bad development of it. Nethack is one of the worst developed games ever. There. I said it. It's a really bad rogue-like, that has held back the genre for years. Even the forks were better.

Master of Magic

I realize this is a clasic, and yes...I played it at least as much as anyone. But it always really annoyed me that the most effective way to play the game was to completely ignore magic and simply build paladins. For most caster designs, magic was a minor little bonus that helped you a tiny little bit most of the time. Apart from a couple of useful early game summons and the 11 book life magic minmax stuff, most spells just weren't useful and required way too much effort to do anything with. If you were capable of using magic effectively, odds were that you'd already "won" and were just tinkering with things. It was a fun game, but it was actually very badly designed. The fun gameplay styles weren't effective at all and the effective stuff tended to be terribly dull. So much of the game could be summarized with "this sounds awesome, but there's really no point in ever using this."

Recipe for beating MoM: mostly ignore magic except to convert to gold to buy buildings faster, get paladins, kill everybody, done.

That was always disappointing in a game that was supposed to be about magic.

Nope. Priests were the killiest unit. Fairly early, ranged, and most races had them. They healed the few "good" mêlée units you had too. Only humans had pallys. Half the roster had priests.

[UristMcDwarf]

SMB 3, Jurrasic Park (SNES), and Super Mario Sunshine are all games I played a lot.

[Zuglarkun]

Lords of Magic:
I was a huge fan of the HOMM series (having played HOMM II), this was a game that was very similar in that vein, taking a hero around to explore the map, amassing resources and building an army to take down your opponents. Each faith had its unique quirks and personality and it even has real time battles for a turn based game, though you can pause and reissue orders at any point in battle. Gameplay was imbalanced if not broken at times, but the mood, atmosphere as well as all the interesting quirks really sold me on this over time. I'm quite taken with the world of Urak, and the modding community over at Mantera really alot to prolong my enjoyment of the game over the years. Did I mention it had an excellent soundtrack? The human theme and fire theme in particular are very nicely done.


King of Dragon Pass:
Not sure if this should count as I got it only a few years back, but the game has been around for over a decade by now. Really nothing of its like in gaming nowadays as far as I know unless you count something like Crusader Kings II. Gameplay is straightforward and it doesn't eat up much time. The lore and world building for this one is pretty top notch, being based of of a tabletop game and it helps to keep you immersed. The fact that the game rewards you for sticking to the customs of Glorantha instead of what we would do as everyday people, really helps to keep the immersion factor up.


I have others that I will not mention in depth because they were either already brought up or pretty well-known like FFVII and Warcraft II. Honorable mention to Kingdom of Loathing, though I'm not sure if it counts as the game is in open beta and is still expanding in content currently though it was released in 2003.

[itisnotlogical]

Perfect Dark

Perhaps the most difficult FPS that I've ever played, based on normal difficulty. Not only does the shooting get quite difficult when enemies start toting grenade launchers, OP assault rifles and cloaking devices, but the objectives are often puzzles, making them a gameplay challenge in their own right.

The original N64 version suffers from quite a bit of slowdown. It would have benefited from being a Gamecube game, but we all know how that story ends...

There was an Xbox 360 port via XBLA. It runs at 60 FPS and features modern control schemes, but IMO the new textures look really uncanny-valley weird.

Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis

Is it arbitrary and unfair? Yes, so is war.

It takes a certain appreciation for clunky, weird PC games to get into this one. On one hand it's an amazing military simulation, featuring tons of weapons and units in a massive open world, with a extensive campaign covering the stories of riflemen, tank commanders, helicopter pilots and black ops commandos...

But on the other hand, it's a non-Q3-based PC game from the early 2000's. There's plenty of bugs and glitches, the controls are not always what you expect, the terrain (and characters, and buildings, and animation, and particle effects, and some of the vehicles) look like ass, and the voice acting is pretty silly.

But it's a really good game, if you can see past that. The battles are very tense and meticulously detailed, requiring more planning and discretion than quick shooting. You won't know where your enemies are until they start shooting; its rare that you'll get the drop on your foe.

[RAM]

Lords of Magic:

Oh, wow, I forgot about that. Which is weird because You are a Necromancer has it as one of the major inspirations, so it is sort of topical.

There was this thing called Gain Ground that was a series of single-screen challenges where you got a single unit at a time and tried to fight your way to the end or defeat the challenge, which consisted of killing hostile critters in dangerous terrain. you actually had a roster of units but they went through one-at-a-time. If a unit died it would leave a corpse that could be rescued by grabbing it and dragging it to the exit. If there was already a corpse then the old corpse would vanish and that unit would be lost forever(or until you found an identical one later). there were also corpses that came with specific challenge screens that could be rescued to increase your roster. I do not recall how much I played that thing, but I think that I could reliably get 100% rescues 0%losses so it must have been a lot...

[Darkmere]

Dr. Mario and Contra for the original NES. I was also a fan of the Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers NES game.

For PC, the first 4X game I ever played was Ascendancy. The techs were weird, the aliens were truly alien (and had no humans on the roster), and the music was awesome. Horrible AI, horribly balanced, kept me occupied for a long time.

Anyone remember an old RTS about robots called Z? (Now with poor mobile port!) The units would actually take evasive maneuvers on their own, do stuff on their own initiative (snipe and capture defensive turrets, for one), and the factories all built for you. You know, before RTS games were ADD clickfests that forced you to waste 2/3 of your attention on tedious maintenance instead of playing the game? This one.

And Total Annihilation, too. Actual artillery with somewhat-to-scale ranges, amirite?

[Rince Wind]

Z was great! Though I never won the last level.

[Sappho]

Oreeegoooooon Traaaaaaaiiiiil
Darklands
Anacreon
Blast Doors
Mice Maze
And my favorite online games, Necromium and Cosrin! Apparently both of those are even still running...

And man, you guys make me feel so old.

[Shadowlord]

Master of Magic

Recipe for beating MoM: mostly ignore magic except to convert to gold to buy buildings faster, get paladins, kill everybody, done.

That was always disappointing in a game that was supposed to be about magic.

My fastest win ever was by rushing the AI mages with ghouls (I first rushed the AI towns next to me to build up my undead legion), and IIRC adding shadow demons when I got them. The last AI mage was the only one who was prepared at all, and ghouls weren't good enough for him, but I still beat him. I don't remember what I used, but I'm guessing a combination of shadow demons, spells, and conventional troops. (It was still ridiculously early when I won)

[Ant]

Cannon Fodder: Hilarious Run'n'Gun, with nice graphs for it's time. Music wasn't too shabby either.
River City Ransom: The one NES game I rented over and over again. Can't remember if I managed to beat it, tho.
Steel Panthers and Panzer General: these games introduced me to strategy games and are still, though in more refined forms, my favorites.
Dreamweb: Little obscure adventure, Short but with passable plot and- for its era- unique presentation. Blade Runner (the film) and this gave spark for me to buy...
System Shock: 2 is more refined, but 1 is IMHO better. Crude and unforgiving at times, it was superior in many ways.
Terra Nova: Many got their first taste of Mech action in Battletech games, I got it from this one. I wish someone would make a game like this in these days.
Iron Cross: The only RTS I wanted to play more than couple of hours. Can't remember why, but it was really fun.