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another day, another controversial top list emerges. granted all of these lists are biased in some way, and it would be hard to find a ranking everyone kind of agrees upon – but the pc gamer list is so wrong it hurts. but, it reminds me of my deep german desire to make lists and sort things by category. plus i wanted to do this for a very long time, as well as create a blog on TL.net and bring as much attention to myself as possible, so it would be natural to combine the three.
so here's my personal top 10: the best pc games of all time as judged by the holy impeccable incarnation of the pc gaming master race and signed by the pope:
#10 prince of persia 2 (1993)
the original PoP games have been one of my best childhood gaming memories, but if i had to pick one of the two i would go with shadow and the flame. why do i love it so much besides the colorful backgrounds, nice scenery, standout animation, great puzzles and brutal difficulty? 20 years later i still am looking for game with a better first level than PoP2: the game begins with you crashing through a window, directly involved into fighting palace guards, making a daring escape over the rooftops to run to the harbor and leaping onto a leaving ship.
currently ubisoft is working on a remake of PoP2 for mobile devices, and i have little doubt that they manage to ruin the game by altering the difficulty and making it 3D for no reason.
#9 GTR 2 (2006)
endless modding capabilities, great physics, a very good graphic and sound engine and online multiplayer: GTR 2 has been one of the most popular PC driving simulations, and is still a favorite of many sim racers to this day.
#8 marathon: infinity (1996)
for many readers this may be the dark horse in this list, because afaik it was only released on macintosh. but you might know it's developer, bungie, which afterwards made oni, myth and the halo series. marathon was the doom of the mac, but with an actual story (that was even good) and akimbo shotguns. with infinity, bungie bundled their editors forge and anvil with the game.
EDIT: you can download and play all three original marathon titles for free here (mac/win/linux).
#7 starcraft 2 (2010)
probably one of the best sequels ever released. what i really like is it's matchmaking system and … hey, i'm on TL, you should know the rest. one thing to note though: i favor sc2 over broodwar while playing myself, but would choose bw over sc2 any day for just watching, and both for the same reasons: the game got easier with multiple building selection and the units were more difficult to handle and master in bw.
#6 civilization 5 (2010)
having played the series since the second game, being a big fan of the third installment, and somewhat critical of the fourth (which doesn't seem to be a very popular opinion), civ5's change to hex tiles and one unit per tile combat made so much sense that it felt instantly right. with the second addon now released, the strategic play has become deep and engaging throughout the course of the entire game, and i can confidently say that i like civ5 now more than any other game in the series.
#5 half-life (1999)
any top video game list that ranks any random single player fps over the original half-life should be disregarded as stupid, uninformed and incredibly wrong. yes, that's including deus ex.
the graphics are the only part of the package that didn't age well, everything else – mechanics, sound design, level design, story, pacing, gunplay – are still an example for anyone trying to make a good shooter.
and even it's successor, hl2, while certainly good, had a lot of levels that felt gimicky in a way that they seemed to be created just for the purpose of showing off the havoc physics or the gravity gun. ironically hl2 is stuffed with vehicle levels as well, but the pacing and story put you more into the passenger seat than hl1. and i will never forgive valve for ditching the gauss.
#4 quake 3: arena (1999)
although the original quake probably had a deeper impact on the industry, and you could count q3 as a part of it's legacy i still think that id software's multiplayer focused shooter is the closest we ever got to a perfect deathmatch and 1on1 fps.
one thing that stands out in particular is the focus with which the gameplay was designed, like the weapons: while modern shooters suffer from an arsenal of often redundant and useless guns, each weapon in q3 is distinctively different from another. each weapon serves a very specific purpose and role, and overlap is minimal.
another hallmark of the quake series in general is their modability, and i will go out on a limb here and say: no other video game so far had so many iconic, distinctive mods as quake: ctf, threewave, team fortress, rocket arena, cpm, osp, defrag, action quake, western quake, urban terror, true combat, freezetag, WFA…
various builds of the quake engine were licensed and used to create games like medal of honor, call of duty, wolfenstein ET, star trek voyager, soldier of fortune and half-life just to name some examples.
#3 diablo 2: lord of destruction (2000)
i don't want to know how many hours i've sunk into this game over the years… this game is like a drug: it's ugly, but it gives you kicks and it's incredibly hard to stop.
#2 starcraft: broodwar (1998)
if i need to explain this to you, what are you doing on TL.net? ohh…
#1 counter-strike (1999)
i have a love/hate relationship with this game, or to be more precise: with the development of it. i discovered cs beta 2 on a local lan party, and i was immediately intimidated. without hesitation, i bought a PC because the then announced half-life mac port was canceled (it was finally released this year). not only was this game the driving force behind my computer equipment purchases in the following years, but also the reason i bothered my parents to get ISDN and later DSL internet. through counter-strike, i met many people and some of them are still close friends of mine.
somewhere, between beta 5 and release 1.1 counter-strike was the perfect game for me. but then valve, now in charge after buying up gooseman and cliffe, lost focus and started catering the game to a different audience. everytime i see someone referencing cs 1.6 as superior to cs:s and cs:go (which happens all time, everywhere) i am seriously inclined to ask: what's the difference? cs 1.6 might be slightly less casual, but all the interesting mechanics have long been removed, the weapons have been made so inaccurate that the gameplay became very slow (or "tactical") and all that it takes to be good is to hover your crosshair over the most preferred sitting spots. there have been no new notable maps since 12 years.
here are some excerpts from the changelogs documenting the demise:
1.1
» Made jumping while shooting more inaccurate w/ submachineguns
» Took out sniper crosshair when zoomed out
» AWP leg shots now non-lethal
before this patch, there was a wide variety of weapons used on pubs as well as competitive play, after this patch almost no one bothered with anything besides the AK47 and M4A1. to this day, from just watching counter-strike you would never guess that the game includes over 20 weapons.
1.3
» Bunny hopping removed.
although the patch notes say bunny hopping, what they really removed was strafe jumping. what happened was that the single mechanic that required lots of practice aside from aiming got removed and made the game very slow and boring to the people who mastered it, while making it easier to pick up for the new and impatient players invading the scene. imagine starcraft without macro, build orders and base management, just armies endlessly marching towards each other and a little bit of micro. i wonder how popular that would be? ohh…
1.4
» Changed so players must stand still when planting the bomb (including no jumping)
» Changed so players can't move or shoot while defusing the bomb
» Adjusted pistol accuracy while jumping (all pistols)
» Adjusted player jumping values to minimize bunny hopping
the patch that finally made me stop playing counter-strike competitively.
this sounds very depressing, and for me it really is. because with all it's current faults, counter-strike is still a very good game – but it was perfect. at least in my memory, it forever will be.
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reading through the list you might have noticed that a lot of these titles are from the late nineties, which is coincidently the time when i was old enough to have my own computer but young enough to still be in school and as such was gifted with lots of free time. on the other hand, 1998 through 2000 were in my opinion the golden years for video games, look at the wikipedia pages (1998, 1999, 2000) with the notable releases for each year: if you would make a top 100 games list not restricted entirely to PC you could easily fill up 50 slots just from these years. In no particular order, just the games that jumped at my eyes:
Resident Evil 2, StarCraft, StarCraft Broodwar, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo 1, Gran Turismo 2, Fallout 2, Grim Fandango, Baldur's Gate I & II, Starsiege: Tribes, Falcon 4.0, Super Smash Bros., Alpha Centauri, HoMM 3, EverQuest, Team Fortress Classic, Half-Life, Quake 3, Counter-Strike, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Descent 3, Outcast, Soulcalibur, Homeworld, Age of Empires II, GTA2, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Soul Reaver, System Shock 2, Shenmue, Diablo 2, The Sims, Thief 2, Icewind Dale, Deus Ex, Jet Set Radio, Hitman, American McGee's Alice, Zelda Majora's Mask, NfS Porsche, Chrono Cross, Planescape Torment.
If this list doesn't include at least one of your favorite games, i'm sorry we won't be friends.
 
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I'm not sure I could entirely agree with your list (though your top 100 honorable mentions help) but I'd say you've covered a lot of good bases. That said, any top 10 of all time list which doesn't include Planescape Torment is wrong. 
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No Dota, No warcraft 3, no TF2, no WoW Vanilla, not a single The Elder Scrolls, no Gothic/Risen.
I guess we wont be friends.
(Also my favourite childhood games Settlers 2 and 3 are missing, but I wasnt expecting them to be here)
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On July 25 2013 22:55 Iyerbeth wrote:I'm not sure I could entirely agree with your list (though your top 100 honorable mentions help) but I'd say you've covered a lot of good bases. That said, any top 10 of all time list which doesn't include Planescape Torment is wrong.
i've added planescape to the list at the bottom, because it fits the criteria. i haven't played it myself, i'm far too impatient for more traditional RPGs. judging from the wikipedia article though, you don't seem to be alone with your opinion 
On July 25 2013 23:02 Kleinmuuhg wrote:
No Dota, No warcraft 3, no TF2, no WoW Vanilla, not a single The Elder Scrolls, no Gothic/Risen.
I guess we wont be friends.
(Also my favourite childhood games Settlers 2 and 3 are missing, but I wasnt expecting them to be here)
i seriously thought about adding warcraft 2 to the list, really close but no cigar. warcraft 3 would definately get a spot within a top 20 as well. the original dota would be included in a ranking of warcraft 3, but i personally don't enjoy MOBA games.
team fortress classic is in the list at the bottom, and tf2 is basically just that but with very nice graphics. i also mentioned the original team fortress mod in the quake 3 section, so maybe there's a tiny chance we might be friends? 
WoW, the elder scrolls and gothic fall into the category of games i'm to impatient for.
and concerning the settlers: i played through settlers 2 once, and liked it but didn't love it. a hidden criteria for this top 10 was a minimum of at least 100 hours played. but hey, i grew up a few blocks away from blue byte, does that count?
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I like your top 3
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You had diablo 2 up there, and BW, and since that was all the pc gaming i really did, i will agree with your top 10 in part.
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various builds of the quake engine were licensed and used to create games like medal of honor, call of duty, wolfenstein ET, star trek voyager, soldier of fortune and half-life just to name some examples.
Wait a minute... Half like is using the quake engine ? Wtf ? For real ? I always thought HL had his own engine
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On July 25 2013 23:24 zuqbu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 22:55 Iyerbeth wrote:I'm not sure I could entirely agree with your list (though your top 100 honorable mentions help) but I'd say you've covered a lot of good bases. That said, any top 10 of all time list which doesn't include Planescape Torment is wrong. i've added planescape to the list at the bottom, because it fits the criteria. i haven't played it myself, i'm far too impatient for more traditional RPGs. judging from the wikipedia article though, you don't seem to be alone with your opinion Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:02 Kleinmuuhg wrote:
No Dota, No warcraft 3, no TF2, no WoW Vanilla, not a single The Elder Scrolls, no Gothic/Risen.
I guess we wont be friends.
(Also my favourite childhood games Settlers 2 and 3 are missing, but I wasnt expecting them to be here) i seriously thought about adding warcraft 2 to the list, really close but no cigar. warcraft 3 would definately get a spot within a top 20 as well. the original dota would be included in a ranking of warcraft 3, but i personally don't enjoy MOBA games. team fortress classic is in the list at the bottom, and tf2 is basically just that but with very nice graphics. i also mentioned the original team fortress mod in the quake 3 section, so maybe there's a tiny chance we might be friends? WoW, the elder scrolls and gothic fall into the category of games i'm to impatient for. and concerning the settlers: i played through settlers 2 once, and liked it but didn't love it. a hidden criteria for this top 10 was a minimum of at least 100 hours played. but hey, i grew up a few blocks away from blue byte, does that count?
Okay. Good response. 5 stars for you sir!
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Top 7 are all some of my favourite games of all time, nice list!
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Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own.
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I think you could possible add "excluding RPGs" That'll save you a lot of responses.
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United States47024 Posts
On July 25 2013 23:38 Marchinko wrote:
Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own.
TBH, a lot of Bethesda games are not looked upon positively among the hardcore CRPG community.
Rating FO3/Oblivion/Skyrim highly is indicative of the genre bias/hypocrisy of such a niche community as ours. We are ultra-critical of the competitive RTS genre, but not equally critical of a game that hardcore fans of that genre consider a pretty dumbed-down game in the genre compared to the "classics".
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On July 25 2013 23:41 Kleinmuuhg wrote:I think you could possible add "excluding RPGs" That'll save you a lot of responses.
Yes this is true. That said, your list is pretty good. Better than a list with TF2, XCOM and L4D2 in it at least x_x. Here's my personal list, which changes all the time and depends entirely on my personal tastes and preferences. I rate games based on how I feel about them now, and not how much they meant to me when they came out, otherwise the list would also include Super Mario, Mario 64, Super Smash Bros and a few other classics from my childhood.
10: Civilization 5
9: Tomb Raider
8: The Witcher 2
7: Bioshock Infinite
---- Above this line, they're great games but I don't consider myself a fan. I guess it's filler kinda.
6: Mass Effect 2 (Great single player game)
5: Chrono Trigger (Ex-best single player game)
4: The Last Of Us (Best single player game - which surprised me more than anybody else)
3: Diablo 2: LOD (Best leisure time game)
2: Counter-Strike 1.6 (Best competitive team game)
1: Starcraft: Brood War (Best competitive 1v1 game)
Other mentions of excellence: Bastion, Frozen Synapse, Magicka, The Legend of Dragoon
I'm probably forgetting a bunch of games. Cheers.
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On July 25 2013 23:34 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +
various builds of the quake engine were licensed and used to create games like medal of honor, call of duty, wolfenstein ET, star trek voyager, soldier of fortune and half-life just to name some examples.
Wait a minute... Half like is using the quake engine ? Wtf ? For real ? I always thought HL had his own engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldSrc
Half-Life is using GoldSrc which is a modified Quake 1 engine, with a few bug fixes from Q2. you can mostly tell if a game is using any quake/idtech engine by pulling down the console and looking for the command formatting, for example triggers being preceded by +/- like +attack/-attack. a lot of other variables haven't changed in the past 15 years like r_picmip/gl_picmip.
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On July 25 2013 23:38 Marchinko wrote:
Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own.
You say Fallout 3 but not the first two ? I don't want to see your list :p
On July 25 2013 23:48 zuqbu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:34 FFW_Rude wrote:
various builds of the quake engine were licensed and used to create games like medal of honor, call of duty, wolfenstein ET, star trek voyager, soldier of fortune and half-life just to name some examples.
Wait a minute... Half like is using the quake engine ? Wtf ? For real ? I always thought HL had his own engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldSrcHalf-Life is using GoldSrc which is a modified Quake 1 engine, with a few bug fixes from Q2. you can mostly tell if a game is using any quake/idtech engine by pulling down the console and looking for the command formatting, for example triggers being preceded by +/- like +attack/-attack. a lot of other variables haven't changed in the past 15 years like r_picmip/gl_picmip.
Yeah i just checked wikipedia. Mind blown for me I really thought HL has its own engine So that's why you can bunny hop in CS :p
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United States47024 Posts
On July 25 2013 23:49 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:38 Marchinko wrote:
Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own. You say Fallout 3 but not the first two ? I don't want to see your list :p
Yeah, FO1/2 is actually the far more egregious omission than FO3. FO3 would actually have trouble making my top 100, tbh. Even if I were to pick a Bethesda RPG, Morrowind, FO:NV, and Skyrim would be more likely to make my list than FO3, and I'm honestly not a big enough Bethesda fan to have more than 2-3 of their games in my top 100.
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On July 25 2013 23:51 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2013 23:49 FFW_Rude wrote:On July 25 2013 23:38 Marchinko wrote:
Cleary you have never played The Witcher 2 or Fallout 3. Both epic games. But, like all list, each to his own. You say Fallout 3 but not the first two ? I don't want to see your list :p Yeah, FO1/2 is actually the far more egregious omission than FO3. FO3 would actually have trouble making my top 100, tbh. Even if I were to pick a Bethesda RPG, Morrowind, FO:NV, and Skyrim would be more likely to make my list than FO3, and I'm honestly not a big enough Bethesda fan to have more than 2-3 of their games in my top 100.
The only thing i hate with all my guts in FO3 is the level 20 limitation that they puted on the first one (i mean before DLC). I really like that game but yeah... You can't say FO3 without saying the other 2 (maybe 3 cause tactics is awesome too :p)
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United States47024 Posts
I don't think FO3 should be compared to the originals, because even though they both have the Fallout name, the gameplay is too different and they have a different developer. It's fighting for a spot with other Bethesda games (Morrowind, NV, Skyrim, Oblivion being the ones people would consider--Arena and Daggerfall are too old for people to fairly judge), and among those, the only one it's probably better than is Oblivion.
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I haven't even played FO1 and FO2 but I wasted 3-4 hours of my time on FO3 and had no fun whatsoever. I don't understand the appeal at all. I found it tedious after 30 minutes.
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EPT
