Good computer games?

[Grimm]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... preadsheet

haven't tried it yet

[Jabberwocky]

It's interesting, and very good for the restricted medium.

[tcjsavannah]

Bah, once again Macs get the short end of the stick on games.

[khalil]

As far as RPGs go, I suggest PLANESCAPE TORMENT.
It's one of the best cRPGs I've ever played in that it actually includes roleplaying, compared to the usual 'here's a dungeon and a hairline plot, go crawl your brains out'.
It's roleplay heavy to the point where there are exactly two fights in the entire game you can't talk your way out of or avoid entirely.
This doesn't stop you from going crawling of course. There's even a randomly generated dungeon. (Made by scientists trying to figure out why people enjoy crawling through randomly generated dungeons.)
The only downside is that it was bug heavy when released, and a lot of fan patches are required to restore most of the stuff that got dummied out.

[Grimm]

That makes me think of one of the reasons I like Crawl tiles so much: it reminds me of Ultima IV. What I really want for Christmas is a game with the Crawl graphics but an overworld, towns, dialogue, moongates, quests, moral choices, etc.

[prozacelf]

As far as RPGs go, I suggest PLANESCAPE TORMENT.
It's one of the best cRPGs I've ever played in that it actually includes roleplaying, compared to the usual 'here's a dungeon and a hairline plot, go crawl your brains out'.
It's roleplay heavy to the point where there are exactly two fights in the entire game you can't talk your way out of or avoid entirely.
This doesn't stop you from going crawling of course. There's even a randomly generated dungeon. (Made by scientists trying to figure out why people enjoy crawling through randomly generated dungeons.)
The only downside is that it was bug heavy when released, and a lot of fan patches are required to restore most of the stuff that got dummied out.

Torment was perhaps my favorite PC game of all time. Certainly my favorite cRPG. I had heard somewhere that the only fight where you absolutely had to kill someone was at the very beginning, although my source may be inaccurate. I clearly never bothered to play that way, although I did talk my way out of a number of fights.

I would also like to recommend Homeworld (but not the expansion or the sequel). It's a space RTS that actually makes good use of the third dimension of, y'know, SPACE. Also your fleet is persistent from level to level, so if you get housed in one level you're basically screwed on the next. Some of the concepts may not seem revolutionary today, but they were when the game came out. The storyline is actually pretty compelling too. Your race of people has discovered that they were actually exiled to the planet they start on long ago, and when they develop faster than light travel to find where they came from originally, the group that exiled your race warp in and destroy that planet. So your ragtag fleet of ships goes from fleeing your ancient oppressors to tracking down your real homeworld and getting revenge on the jerks who exiled you.

[Grimm]

Yeah Homeworld is fun. Looks real sexy. Ever try the demake of it?

[prozacelf]

I had never even heard of the demake. Looks cute.

On a related note, I've been crusading for an HD remake of Homeworld for years now.

[TehDruid]

I finally found Titan Quest Gold on a store in the used section (altough the dvd doesn't bear a scratch at all, looks unused). I have to say, it's probably the best 4.99 euros I've ever paid for a game.

[Galefury]

TQ is quite nice. There are some good mods for it, too. I'm not up to date regarding TQ mods, though, so I cant really recommend anything.

[khalil]

As far as RPGs go, I suggest PLANESCAPE TORMENT.
It's one of the best cRPGs I've ever played in that it actually includes roleplaying, compared to the usual 'here's a dungeon and a hairline plot, go crawl your brains out'.
It's roleplay heavy to the point where there are exactly two fights in the entire game you can't talk your way out of or avoid entirely.
This doesn't stop you from going crawling of course. There's even a randomly generated dungeon. (Made by scientists trying to figure out why people enjoy crawling through randomly generated dungeons.)
The only downside is that it was bug heavy when released, and a lot of fan patches are required to restore most of the stuff that got dummied out.

Torment was perhaps my favorite PC game of all time. Certainly my favorite cRPG. I had heard somewhere that the only fight where you absolutely had to kill someone was at the very beginning, although my source may be inaccurate. I clearly never bothered to play that way, although I did talk my way out of a number of fights.

Nah. The two mandatory fights are the spirits of good and neutrality corrupted by the planes that Deionarra mentions in her prophecy at the start of the game. (Angel McNotfallen and RAVAL PUZZLEWELL, WITCH OF THE NIGHT respectively) Evil would also be included, but he got cut for time.

[prozacelf]

That makes sense. I had no intentions of going through that game as a pacifist, and the stupid Angel/Deva/whatever was probably the coolest fight in the game, so I wouldn't care to pass that up anyway. I've heard that a number of people have made mods for that game to fill in the stuff that got cut for time, but I have no idea of the relative quality of the mods.

Heh....also, I knew I should've kept Morte around and left those two rotten bastards Vhailor and Ignus to rot.

[cerebovssquire]

dude... he's a flying skull that talks how could you even think of leaving him

[prozacelf]

He was my favorite character in the game, but when I was playing it through for the first time, my roommate owned the game and I had already seen what happened when you kept him, so I crammed him back in the pillar. Poor Morte, I hardly knew ye.

Ignus was at least useful for 9/10ths of the game. Vhailor was just a loud idiot. The modron was a lot of fun though. I'm glad I kicked out Annah to get him.

[varsovie]

I finally found Titan Quest Gold on a store in the used section (altough the dvd doesn't bear a scratch at all, looks unused). I have to say, it's probably the best 4.99 euros I've ever paid for a game.

Take a look on Grim Dawn then. It's an indie aRPG made by the lead designer of TQ. It's not out yet (alpha very soon), but there is a lot of info on the forums.
http://www.grimdawn.com/index.php

[khalil]

That makes sense. I had no intentions of going through that game as a pacifist, and the stupid Angel/Deva/whatever was probably the coolest fight in the game, so I wouldn't care to pass that up anyway. I've heard that a number of people have made mods for that game to fill in the stuff that got cut for time, but I have no idea of the relative quality of the mods.

Heh....also, I knew I should've kept Morte around and left those two rotten bastards Vhailor and Ignus to rot.

Vhailor is OK if you aren't chaotic. Fortuantely, I left Ignus behind because I was a spellcaster and I didn't need another. Then he shows up to kill me anyway. Not like your party members do any good in the fortress of regrets anyway.

[Jabberwocky]

I've been playing a game by the name of Kinetic Void recently. It's a cool game, being a singleplayer space exploration sandbox, in which you build ships and trade stuff and explore the random world, and fight bandits and such.

[Grimm]

That looks pretty cool. Can you assemble a crew?

[Jabberwocky]

You can with frigates and up. I'll upload some images once I'm in with my current ship, a heavy frigate. It's 3D though.

[Bloax]

Dungeon Crawl Stone Sou-

Wait a minute, where am I again?

[Grimm]

Sweet. What I would really like is a spacefaring game where you can walk around inside the ship, put stuff in lockers, that sort of thing, like you could in Sundog.

[Confidence Interval]

Sweet. What I would really like is a spacefaring game where you can walk around inside the ship, put stuff in lockers, that sort of thing, like you could in [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunDog:_Frozen_Legacy]Sundog.

[Grimm]

Time hangeth heavy for you.

[Grimm]

It seems you can't have one url inside another one.

[Jabberwocky]

Sweet. What I would really like is a spacefaring game where you can walk around inside the ship, put stuff in lockers, that sort of thing, like you could in Sundog.

Can't do that in KV yet, though that'd be pretty cool.
The pics from my last little session are through the link, didn't bother uploading 'em properly, I wasn't in any kind of fight though so no pictures of the fighting. It's not my main ship, I just was messing around to show the scale that ships can be.
They're the ones at the top.http://steamcommunity.com/id/pefabrain/screenshots/

[Grimm]

They're the ones at the top.http://steamcommunity.com/id/pefabrain/screenshots/

It's got lions, a-and toilets!

[Jabberwocky]

That's a different game FYI.

[CykusX]

Spiderweb Software has some fairly good RPG games (The Exile/Avernum series or Geneforge) with some pretty good storylines. Has anyone ever played either?

[Jabberwocky]

I've played Avadon a fair bit, and liked that. I played Avernum 4 a little, but for whatever reason, it didn't appeal enough for me to keep playing. I'll probably go back and try it again one of these days.

[ZipZipskins]

Spiderweb Software has some fairly good RPG games (The Exile/Avernum series or Geneforge) with some pretty good storylines. Has anyone ever played either?

I've played a lot of both the Geneforge and Avernum series (I actually played the Exile series extensively before they retooled it into Avernum) and I love both. The writing is excellent and in Geneforge and the later Avernums there are lots of interesting moral choices. The party combat in Avernum is pretty interesting. It suffers a bit from linear warriors, quadratic wizards, until you realize what a hasted, blessed, shielded warrior really means in that game (hint: it means ripping through enemy squads)

They're also both really, really difficult, even on Normal, and Avernum in particular on higher difficulty settings is fiendishly challenging.

Highly recommend both series. Crawl lovers will probably appreciate the difficulty level and tactical gameplay of both, and most people will probably love the stories and settings, which are interesting.

Oh, and also, you're supporting a video game company that employs a grand total of three people, and still manages to make these incredible epics. It's pretty much all just Jeff Vogel.

[Grimm]

While reading Ray Huang's excellent China: A Macro History (which contains the repeated assertion that "traditional China was like a submarine sandwich", not to mention a refreshing perspective on capitalism) I came across thunderbird.cz's Two Powers 2, the only small browser game I'm aware of that covers the Warring States period of Chinese history. Its mechanics are simple but it seems fairly deep - at least, I can't get very far in it.

He's also got a version set in Japan and the cool Spear and Katana 2 game of man to man combat.

[WildSam]

I summarised stuff from my HD which kind of falls under your criterica and weren't mentioned before.
Arcanum: cool steampunk RPG with magic and dialoges and stuff. Considering same dev more like steampunk Fallout. Actually their company "Troika Games" died horribly after failing to perform commercial success in years, but their games are kinda highly rated by some elitist jerks. May worth check.
Space Station 13 (via BYOND): online multiplayer sandbox with roleplayin and stuff. And you can play as station AI. And security beatin shit outa ya because they're bad as usual. YOU CAN ROLEPLAY AI. And space wizards. Did i mention AI thing? And xenomorphs.
Corneroids: Minecraft in space. Build your cubical space ship and... Ok, i never checked it after early alpha and it were kinda boring in alpha but may be good now.
Crusader Kings 2: play some noble guy in medieval europe and direct your dynasty and perform some medieval noble stuff (like war or politics or makin bastards with your lord's wife or dying). Kind of usual Paradox Interactive nerdy strategy, but most casual and user-friendly amongst them and you heavily accociated with your character.
Dark Souls: third-person RPG about killing stuff and dying a lot. Kinda japanise in gamedesign. Features oldschool difficulty when fail hurts. Somewhat similiar to roguelikes: grindy and you die a lot and death is bad. Port from console so controls and camera suck.
Dominions 3: coolest strategy ever with mythology and gods and cool magic and stuff. Mentioned before, but too cool for not mention one more time.
Incursion: nice roguelike based on d20, dead btw. Dual wielding. Altar sacrifices. Rare game where alpha actually means buggy. REALLY BUGGY. Not that interesting if you're not into D&D, because features interesting interpretation of rules adapted for PC.
Mount&Blade: action/rpg about medieval stuff like wars and tournaments and stuff. Cool.
Kerbal Space Program: sandbox about some minor race exploring space. Build crafts, try to send them above.
Scribblenauts: puzzle game about turning words into items and using them.
Silent Hunter series (3rd, personally): you command a submarine. In correct version you command U-Boot. Features realism and German voice acting. Sink convoys and lose war anyway.
Leygref's Castle: like Crawl if you allow devs to remove stuff because it's all what they want obviously.

[graffen69]

If you like the old MIght & Magic-series chances are good you´ll feel right at home with Knights of pen and paper +1 edition
http://store.steampowered.com/app/231740/

A wonderful little game that got me hooked from start. The silly trailer aside and the more humorous take on the changer is something that i usually think just ruins the atmosphere but it works for this game.
Honestly, this is old school RPG at it´s best. I haven´t had this much fun on a computer game since we played Bard´s Tale 1 on my friends Amiga all those years ago (with the exception of DCSS ofc ).
Released exactly a week ago (18 June) on PC/Mac for 9.99 € (14.99 € for deluxe) on STEAM but has been around longer as an app for 2 €
No demo out yet though.

[Baldu]

I just want to point out something important about one of the previous suggestions: Dominions 3. This is perhaps the most micro intensive computer game in the history of the universe, so consider yourself warned. If you get a game to turn 30, you'll likely need 30-60 minutes to do a turn. If you get to turn 60, you'll need 1-2h for each turn. If you get to turn 100, you'll wish you were dead.

It's one of the most fascinating games i've ever seen, but i consider it completely unplayable on my time budget. I would strongly recommend you never play it but instead find reports of others playing to get great entertainment without wasting your life (do a web search for "LP Dominions 3" for quality reports).

[twelwe]

I Play Civ 5 My Favorite Second Best Game!

[prozacelf]

I haven't been able to play any of the Civilization games since playing Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Several iterations of Civ later still didn't have some basic features of SMAC, like workshops to create custom units and upgrading old units (hello dudes with spears fighting alongside tanks!)

[Grimm]

A-and sea cities!

[joellercoaster]

Help.

My current game is segfaulting in the Abyss going for Rune #5 (bug #7238). I have a couple of other characters at about XL17 (SpAK, DrNe) who are not in the Abyss but have kind of lost interest in them.

A bugfix may be a while coming. I can be patient.

What should I play in the meantime?

Last time this happened I picked up Brogue, which was pretty amazing but isn't quite what I'm after at the moment. I've purchased or downloaded Space Pirates and Zombies, Gratuitous Space Battles and, uh, Anomaly: Warzone Earth. And TOME. GSB lasted ten minutes (amusing, but it's a game for someone else).

What should I play? SPaZ, AWE, TOME? Or something else altogether?

[Grimm]

It's summer, go outside.

[dirtywick]

Sword of the Stars is an awesome 4X space game. There's a sequel I haven't played that is probably also awesome.

[joellercoaster]

It's summer, go outside.

It's British summer, going outside is not always possible. I made six skydives on Saturday, but the sunshine can't last.

At which point, I'll need video games!

[tcjsavannah]

If you like the old MIght & Magic-series chances are good you´ll feel right at home with Knights of pen and paper +1 edition
http://store.steampowered.com/app/231740/

Thanks for this suggestion. I am having a blast with this. First game I've bought off of Steam for a while, but well worth the trip down nostalgia lane.

[Grimm]

Small but intriguing: http://www.mirrow.org/

[varsovie]

Dominions 3. This is perhaps the most micro intensive computer game in the history of the universe

Well, you never played Dwarf Fortress or Aurora.

Anyone here have tried Rogue Legacy?

[Siegurt]

This was a great indie game I used to play on my amiga, they ported it to "PC" (i.e. dos), and I now play it on my Win 7 box using DosBox.

Top Hat Willy:
http://www.pastrytech.com/willy/

The link to download the "PC" (dos) version's kinda buried most of the way down the page

It's one of the funnest, simplest, bizzarest, addictive-ist, platform-jumper type games around.

[twelwe]

I Play Civ 5 A Brave New World My Favorite Second Best Game!

[Grimm]

Why didn't we think of this:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/GreyAli ... -pub-crawl

[Klown]

On a related note, I've been crusading for an HD remake of Homeworld for years now.

Gearbox Software(Borderlands creators) bought the rights to the Homeworld franchise from the now defunct THQ, and have announced HD Remakes of Homeworld 1&2!!!

On-Topic: The Binding of Isaac, Torchlight 2, Assault Cube, Team Fortress 2, Dragon Nest, StarCraft 2, The Battle for Wesnoth.

[CykusX]

Dominions 3. Whoever does not play that game is missing out on some awsome 4x micromanaging, world destroying, god killing, mind fuckery, goodness!!! Play it....

[rosstin]

Rogue Legacy is new, cool, and "sort of" a roguelike. I greatly enjoyed it.