Good PC games from the past few years you may have missed out on
I fear that all the buzz over Far Cry 2 in recent days has crowded out other PC games that are no less worthy of mention, so allow me to take a step back and cover some of the PC games that I enjoyed immensely over the past two years or so. If you’re looking for a game to play that’s just as fun as what’s coming out now, but won’t run you the full $50 price tag, look no further than these games.
Team Fortress 2. Yeah, we’re still playing the ol’ Teef regularly in this household. Grokmoo wrote quite extensively about the parts of the game we enjoy, so I’ll just give the bottom line here: the game has been out for a little while yet still enjoys a thriving community. The nine classes seem deceptively simple (only three weapons each, one of which is a melee weapon), but each require completely different strategies, so that mastering even one takes awhile and mastering them all is quite the feat. Add to that the number of different gameplay modes and all the custom maps that are available, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that you can easily get hundreds of hours of playtime out of Team Fortress 2.
Crysis (and its expansion pack Warhead) offers one of the best single player FPS experiences in recent memory. The graphics are simply amazing and will definitely put your high-end video card through its paces. Frustrated by the slowness and general aimlessness of the story missions in Far Cry 2? Then Crysis is the cure. And despite it being over a year older, its engine is definitely better (probably because it wasn’t compromised by having to work on consoles). All it takes to realize the superiority of the engine is to level a copse of trees — full of enemies attempting to hide — with a mounted machine gun. There’s nothing else quite so satisfying as to take out not just all of your enemies, but also all of the trees.
Sins of a Solar Empire is an intriguing mix of real-time strategy, tactics, and space warfare. Think Galactic Civilizations or Masters of Orion but in real time. It definitely has its flaws (like the complete lack of a single player campaign), but the price has come down enough by now that it’s worth checking out just to experience its uniqueness. The capital ships that gain experience and abilities from fighting are a neat twist that bring the hero mechanic from fantasy RPGs into the realm of space strategy, but without overwhelming you with micromanagement.
Supreme Commander is the real time strategy game of epic proportions that was the topic of my first blog collaboration with Grokmoo. The spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, it offered the grandest vision yet of the scale a land-based RTS game can aspire to. Its strategic zoom capability, where you can seamlessly zoom out from watching individual units to seeing the entire massive battlefield, is still unmatched to this day by any other offering. Supreme Commander is that rare breed of RTS that rewards overall strategy and logistics a lot more than micromanagement of individual unit abilities (like, say, every Blizzard RTS ever). And the sheer number of units, and thus tactical possibilities, will be overwhelming to anyone who hasn’t played a Chris Taylor RPG before.
Galactic Civilizations II can best be described as the spiritual successor to Masters of Orion. It’s a turn-based space warfare strategy game with an excellent customization system for creating spaceships with whatever abilities and aesthetics you desire. Galactic Civilizations teaches the importance of mixed unit warfare, as it’s a lot more effective to have a few dedicated intel ships with sensors out the wazoo in every fleet than buying decent sensors on every warship. Likewise, it’s not all just about super-powerful battleships; you also need fast, small ships to be able to quickly respond to enemy threats.
Peggle. Yeah, I went there. I was first introduced to Peggle when it came bundled with the Half-Life 2 Orange Box (speaking of which, the rest of the games in the Orange Box are also worth a play-through, especially Portal). If you’re looking for deep gameplay, or a plot, you won’t find it in Peggle, but what it does really well is casual, mindless fun. Peggle is basically pachinko with steroids. It’s what I play (on a different computer using the same screen) when I wait for Team Fortress 2 games to load. Go ahead and laugh at me if you want, but there’s something so damned addicting about Peggle. It’s not all about hardcore first person shooters and real time strategy games, after all. You need some levity.
October 31st, 2008 at 9:18 am
I really want to play Sins of a Solar Empire. I just don’t have ready access to a PC that can handle it, so it’ll have to wait a while before I can. Gal Civ II is preternaturally awesome, and I’m a big SupCom fan. I’d also throw Company of Heroes into that mix. It’s a very very good game…
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Viperion: Sins of a Solar Empire has pretty low system requirements. Are you sure you can’t play it? I remember reading an interview with the developers where they said one of their design goals was to allow it to be played on most computers, and frankly, it showed when I was playing through the game on my high-end system. Luckily it was a space RTS where the graphics aren’t make-or-break like they typically are with, say, an FPS.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 pm
My Windows machine here is an Asus EEE 900, screen res 1024×600. Sins requires 1024×768. I can play it, but I have to scroll up and down on the screen. Having played Alpha Centauri that way for a while, I’ll pass on an RTS that makes me do that.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:04 am
Ouch, I wouldn’t want to try playing PC games on a netbook. Looking at it on a review site, though, it looks to have a D-sub out connector, so try hooking it up to an external monitor that gives you the necessary resolution?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I could, but getting an external monitor here is kind of a hassle and expensive, and I’m not sure I want to deal with that… Probably will just play some at home over Christmas, and wait for next summer.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Where are you that getting a monitor is expensive? Where I am, you can get good-sized CRT monitors for free or practically free. That’s all you’d need, really.