Quake II is a first person shooter with maximum gibbing. It places you in the shoes of a marine who must conquer the planet Stroggos and save humanity (how original). It was created by gaming god John Carmack of iD Software and it's got the ability to be fun and very immersive. When the question "Does it have too much violence?" is asked, I answer, "More than once this and other games have provided me with an activity that takes my mind off whatever made me angry and lets me 'relieve my anxiety' on the Strogg, not other people."
Here's a Tank, Enforcer, Parasite, Icarus, Barracuda Shark, and Shotgun Guard from Quake 2. All I can say is watch out for Parasites. Also, some of these, like the tank, are way bigger than others, like the shark.
Starcraft is a real-time strategy game made by Blizzard. The object is to gather minerals to build a base, expand your production, and conquer your enemy. You can play as one of three different yet well-balanced races which are battling over a piece of the galaxy. It's got three campaigns (one for each race - Zerg, Terran, Protoss), an expansion pack called Starcraft: Brood War, many multiplayer maps, and a free arena to fight other Starcraft players called Battle.net.
These are some shots of Starcraft units. Clockwise are from upper left are: concept art of a Protoss Dark Archon (found only in Brood War), detail of a Zerg Devourer (also only in Brood War), a screenshot from a cinematic of Fenix, a Protoss hero, and concept art of a Terran Firebat.
Here are two other titles by the same companies. They were groundbreaking in their day (mid-90's) and are still fun to play. Doom gave rise to Quake while Warcraft spawned Starcraft. The games are pretty much the same as above (Doom' s a first person shooter and Warcraft is RTS), but they're older, less complex, and the graphics aren't as good. You can now play Warcraft 2 on Battle.net but you have to buy the Battle.net version of it.
Alpha Centauri was made by (you guessed it) Sid and also Brian Reynolds of Firaxis. It's a turn-based strategy game where you control one of seven human factions on the world of Planet near the star Alpha Centauri. Alien Crossfire is the expansion pack for it and I don't have it. This game can be extremely complex or as simple as you like. I found it got boring after you won every possible way and controlled each faction.
Here's a blurry screenshot of Civilization II, also by Sid Meiers, but this time with Microprose. It's turn-based strategy and I think it's funner and has more replay value than Alpha Centauri. The object is to bring your civilization to power by achieving space travel, conquering the world, and some other things I forgot.
I recently bought Half-Life and after playing through it once I can say it's one of the best games ever. It a first-person shooter but it also has its share of relevant puzzles to go along the imaginative monsters and great atmosphere. But what sets it apart from games like the Doom's and the Quake's is the seamless cinematic sequences and short load times between levels. It manages to blend cinematics into the gameplay so you never leave the gameworld or lose the sense of apprehension.
Here we see a scientist helping a guard, some of the memebers a the marine death squad sent in to "cleanse" the area, your trusty magnum and it hapless victim, and two aliens duking it out (at least that's what I think they're doing).
The Sim City Series (Sim City, SC2000, and SC3000) is the most successful branch of the entire large Sim series of games by Maxis. Made by Will Wright, these games put you in the position of Mayor in an infinite amount of random cities. You can create your own cities with a few chosen attributes or you can do scenarios (in SC2000 and SC3000) where you have to save a famous city from a famous disaster. One of the best parts of the game is building up an awesome city, saving it, and then destroying it with disasters.
The Team Fortress Classic mod for Half-Life, TFC 1.5, is a multiplayer game where you play with and against others over the Internet. There are many different maps with unique objectives. Team play is critical since you choose a class that has strengths but also weaknesses your teammates must cover for. It's very fun, and even though some Counterstrike players call it almost comical visually. I think that it helps kids distinguish games from reality if you maintain some semblance of non-reality.
These are all the different classes you can play in TFC. There's scout, spy, medic, heavy weapons guy, soldier, sniper, engineer, demoman, and pyro. See if you can match 'em all!
An action/rpg mix where your mission is to defeat an evil that has been plaguing the town of Tristram. You're a hero with Medieval weapons and armor and a group of townsfolk to help and you must explore the labyrinth under the town to find the evil and extinguish it. I have not beaten it yet even though I have beaten Diablo II. [I have now beaten it - Ed. Hey, who wrote that? You did. Why am I talking to myself. Did I just write that? Shut up.]
This is a picture of a Rogue stepping through a portal to help out some friends battle the minions of Diablo.
Diablo II is the sequel to Diablo and it's way better than the original. I got Diablo II for Christmas and had to beat it in the week before school started since my laptop can't handle its specs. Somehow I did it. It's an awesome game with five character classes and it's four times the size of the original. The scope is bigger with more worlds, more monsters, more gold, more variety in quests and weapons, and an awesome storyline. The only things I didn't like were the running around to sell weapons (though not as much running around as in the original) and the save feature forced me to play in large blocks of time, since saving exited the game and respawned all the monsters I just killed. It took probably 30 hours to defeat Diablo. It was surprisingly easy to kill him with the Barbarian even though I still haven't killed him in the original game with my Rogue. The cinematics are a marvel with a cool letterbox format. I highly recommend getting this and any other Blizzard games you don't have.
This is a picture of the Barbarian leaping into battle. He's a fighter who's strong at hand to hand combat so he needs strength and dexterity.
Here's a pic of the assassin class from the Diablo 2 Expansion "Lord of Destruction". It's probably a good deal by now since it's been out for a while. You get two new classes to play with (druid and assassin), another act set in the Barbarian Highlands, new monsters, new items, and a double-sized stash. The expansion is fun and the new set items rule. The assassin freakin dominates the easiest difficulty with her fire and lightning sentries, her shadow masters and her fade ability. I was able to kill Diablo without leaving his Chaos Sanctuary once. It's probably pretty cheap by now, so I would recommend getting it.
Age of Empires 2 is an RTS put out by Microsoft. It's not as good as Starcraft/Warcraft IMHO, but after playing it for a time I grew to enjoy it. It's also the only computer game my brother plays, which is saying something. It's challenging, and I haven't beaten it. There's a lot more realistic look to it than many games out there, and you can control large groups of units, giving you the feeling of being a general. The graphics are neither bad nor exceptional. The single player campaign lets you control five different historical figures over the course of their lives. The pre-mission breifings are narrated by a guy with an accent that's the same as the nationality of the hero you're currently playing with, but the accent is low-quality for a couple campaigns, especially the Scottish accent. Besides that, if you conquer the learning curve, you can have a good time playing the game.
Test Drive 6 is a game I got for free from a box of Chex. It was well worth it. The graphics weren't shabby at all and it was fun, like most driving games are, and there were cool cars and many crashes and all that, but I'm not a car-game connoisseur, having played only the original Need for Speed before, so I'm not sure how this game stacks up. Even though most of what I read in reviews for the game was negative, I still enjoyed it except for the parts where I crashed.
The Legend of Dragoon is a game for Playstation 1 that's the first PS1 game I ever played through. It's an RPG where you control various characters whose lives are intertwined as the seek answers to their own lives' questions. By some twist of fate they're all Dragoons (gasp!), which are super-powerful human warriors with the ability to use the power of dragons. The story is long and pretty deep (but not movie-like deep). The battle system is different from Final Fantasy games, because how much damage you do depends on your ability to click "X" at the right times. There is lots of magic and special attacks, and many bosses. The cut scenes are very well done and are a treat after long stretches of battling. The game took quite a while to finish, so if you pay up, you'll get a lot of gaming for the money. It's a kind of old game, so I think they've revamped it with better in-game graphics (righthand pic), but the picture of the guy in green is about the quality of graphics I had while playing (lefthand pic). There's not a whole lot of breadth to the plot, so I would recommend this if you want a fun, semi-mindless rpg."
This is Warlords and Warlords 2 Deluxe. Warlords was the first game I got hooked on and I played it every day during lunch at school in 7th grade. Warlords 2D was the first game I played when we got a computer at home in 1995 and surprisingly it's still fun. They're both turn-based strategy games and Warlords 2D has a great variety of armies and environments. They have made like three other Warlords games but I haven't played any and have no desire to.
Finally we come to the two best games of all time - Tetris and Asteroids. These games are not quite perfect, (Pong being the only perfect game ever made), but they are the most addictive. It can only be speculated, but my guess is that the number of hours wasted playing these games is in the trillions.
PC Gamer is put out by Imagine Media and it's the best PC games magazine there is. It's the only one I've ever read or needed. It's got spot-on reveiws, effective strategies, breaking news, contests, reader mail, and a CD with game demos and patches every month. The only other games magazine I've read (for 2 issues) is the now-defunct PC Accelerator and it read like the guys from the Man Show wrote it (which is fine unless you're looking for high-quality content about games with your women). I would recommend to any serious gamer to subscribe - and I wish they were paying me to say this.
My Favorite Gaming Sites
The Makers of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Battle.net
The Makers of Doom and Quake
The Makers of Alpha Centauri
The Half-Life site
Play Tetris, Asteroids and other Java games for free
PC Gamer magazine site
Penny Arcade - A gaming site w/a comic that I read