Essential must-play Windows games?

July 2, 2009 6:00 PM

Essential Windows-only PC games?

I'm a lifelong Mac user... just installed Windows XP on a Boot Camp partition on the Mac, and now am able for the first time to consider Windows-only games that have never been ported to the Mac or available in Flash or otherwise online.

So... what are the must-play Windows-only games? C'mon, Windows gamers, tell us what you've been hoarding all to yourselves all these years :)

Also open to games that are a year or two old, if they're classics (i.e. they're still must-play games)... just want to gain some fluency around the essentials I've missed from having been into Mac and Web gaming only.

posted by mark7570 to computers & internet (25 comments total)

Thief 1 and 2
Beyond Good and Evil
Deus Ex
Starcraft
Anachronox
posted by fearthehat at 6:26 PM on July 2

Jagged Alliance 2.
posted by pravit at 6:28 PM on July 2

X-COM! ON SALE TODAY ONLY FOR $7.50!!

X-COM bundle at Gamer's Gate for $7.50.

The classic RTS.
posted by GuyZero at 6:29 PM on July 2 [2 favorites]

I believe the essential Bioware games (BGII!) have versions out for the mac, but not the Bethesda ones: Morrowind and/or Oblivion.
posted by flavor at 6:29 PM on July 2

Half-Life 2 and Portal
posted by zerokey at 6:47 PM on July 2

gah..and Team Fortress 2. You may as well get Valve's Orange Box.
posted by zerokey at 6:48 PM on July 2

Starcraft and Deus X are available on Mac.

Planescape: Torment is supposed to be one of the best RPG's ever made.

Also you can pick up Fallout 3 for $25 this weekend and the Orange Box for like $30, on Steam.
posted by Spacelegoman at 6:48 PM on July 2 [1 favorite]

Seconding Planescape: Torment. It is my favorite RPG game on any platform.

If you want a bit more old school, Star Control 2, which is absolutely amazing for its time and is still fun to play through.

System Shock 2 is a classic as well.
posted by seppyk at 7:18 PM on July 2

Nthing Orange Box. If your Mac is a Pro or one of the better iMacs, it'll run fairly well and be a good time. This contains the Half Life 2 series of games, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. These are considered to be some of the best recent games, and are really worth buying all together, since it's cheaper, and they're all "must plays" in my opinion for PC gamers.

Fallout 3 is not available on OSX, and it doesn't look like it's coming. It's a great role playing game, which takes place from the first person perspective. It's been derisively called "Oblivion with guns," but I think it's a suitable title. It's the same basic gameplay, but it's more accessible and it gets some decent writing and humor from the Fallout universe (Fallout 1 and 2 are Mac games, so I guess those are out. The story is perfectly understandable without playing them).

The above two are on the Xbox 360, but I'm guessing you don't own one if you're asking about recent PC games. There's a lot of overlap between the two platforms since most AAA PC games are first person shooters, which the Xbox controller is good for, as far as console controllers go.

For the record, Deus Ex would play much better on PC (albeit it needs patches and tweaks to get it to run stably on a modern multicore PC), as the Mac version was ported for the PowerPC (pre-Intel) architecture, meaning the game has to be emulated on the fly, so it will play very slowly or not at all. It's about a decade old now, so that's not exactly what you're looking for, but it's definitely a classic. It's an RPG-FPS hybrid with lots of choice and character customization, and it's not so old that it's hard to get into.

The original Half Life is also a great old game, but it hasn't aged quite as well as Deus Ex. It was an innovative FPS at a time when most FPSes were treading old ground. It particularly introduced better storytelling and immersion (no cut scene where the player loses control, no items that glow/float, realistic weapons), but most of it's good decisions were picked up by later games, so the problems from the time are more glaring. The story is pretty basic in this game, so you don't really need to play it to figure out the Orange Box.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:26 PM on July 2

If you're into RPGs, I would get the Morrowind and Oblivion combo (with all expansions) on Steam for $45. If you're into first-person shooters, get the Orange Box, which comes with Half-Life 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2 for $30. Deus Ex is one of the best FPS adventure games ever, you can get it for $10.
posted by demiurge at 7:33 PM on July 2

A good place to get a lot of the games is either through Good Old Games or Steam. Good Old Games is a store that will have more of the classic games at low prices and without DRM, while Steam is the game store run by Valve that has more modern games as well as a few classics. Most weekends, they have deep discounts on a few games, and they also list Metacritic ratings alongside each game's page so that you have fair warning if a game had a poor critical reception. It has very basic DRM, and it's pretty much required to run Valve games (which are arguably the best PC games).
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:35 PM on July 2

Age of Empires - 3 is pretty good, 2 was the high point of the series for me (although not much to look at nowdays). I still play 3 heaps.
posted by rodgerd at 7:44 PM on July 2

Yeah, you missed Star Control 2. If you never played it, you're really missing out. You can download the freeware port of the game, called Ur-Quan Masters, here. It's old school, but awesome.
posted by Simon Barclay at 8:38 PM on July 2

Oh, and a great recent first-person shooter with awesome graphics: F.E.A.R.
posted by Simon Barclay at 8:40 PM on July 2

Star Control 2's freeware port and FEAR are available for the Mac.
posted by Electrius at 8:45 PM on July 2

I don't know how good the gameplay of Star Control 2 is, but I found a website "spoiler" that went through the story arc and found it to be completely mind-blowing in its inventiveness and brazen laconic humor.
posted by @troy at 9:44 PM on July 2

Max Payne 1 & 2
Peggle
Bejewled 1,2,Twist
Worms 1&2

Old school:
doom
Wolfenstein 3d
Duke Nukem 3d
posted by pyro979 at 10:00 PM on July 2

Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II w/Throne of Bhaal expansion.

(In fact I just replayed it this week. I wanted to see if I could solo it. I did.)
posted by Bonzai at 10:01 PM on July 2

What kind of games do you like?

For RPGs:
I vote Planescape Torment for it's writing alone (though if you don't like old-school RPG's, it's probably going to feel too slow.) I'm loving that so many mefites share the Planescape Torment love!!! Best written RPG, ever!

For somewhat old school strategy:
Age of Mythology
Dungeon Keeper II
Theme Hospital (funniest game I've ever played)
Tropico (note: I hear the new Tropico is coming out this year!!!)

For shooters:
Deus Ex (never played it, just year good things about it)

For puzzle/adventure:
Portal

If you don't already own a 360:

Action/Adventure: Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 3
posted by thisperon at 10:56 PM on July 2

I know it was released for Mac, but TIE Fighter is a must-have.

Nthing Portal and the Half Life series. Play them in order.

And get The Curse of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango if you like fun and adventure (and pirates, and ghosts, and skeletons, and voodoo, and monkeys, and retractable scythes, and rubber chickens with pulleys in the middle, etc., etc.)

As for the GTA series, I think Vice City would be a better introduction than 3. The gameplay is much more refined, both in terms of interface (navigation blips, especially), and game flow (the entire map is opened up about a quarter through, missions can be chosen less linearly).
posted by clorox at 12:52 AM on July 3

Mass Effect is an amazingly fun space opera RPG. The Elder Scrolls games are great fantasy RPGs, but can turn into a real time suck.

I play Left 4 Dead every Friday with some of my dispersed friends from undergrad, and it has yet to get old. Left 4 Dead is worth it simply for the single player, and the multiplayer modes are a higher level of awesome.

Both of these are available for Steam, so I second downloading that.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 3:03 AM on July 3

Half Life 1 & 2
Portal
Bioshock
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
Command & Conquer
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Civilization II
Quake
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Grim Fandango
posted by Mwongozi at 4:28 AM on July 3

Deus Ex has been mentioned a few times - it was released for classic Macs, but won't run on OSX. It really is the best PC game ever, quite frankly. I'm running it under Boot Camp and it works fine. However, it doesn't play nice with dual processors, so you'll have to fiddle around with the settings to get it to run properly.

Avoid DX2 though. A real disappointment, that one.
posted by permafrost at 5:08 AM on July 3

if you have a joystick, get mechwarrior 4. flight simulators on PCs are supposed to be impressive but I wouldn't know
posted by Redhush at 9:10 PM on July 3

Some of the older games mentioned are reminding me of some other classics:

X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter
One of my all time favorite games, Elite (which has been reborn via open source as Oolite (ok..I'm cheating - you can play it on a Mac)
Seconding Mechwarrior 4

And if you want to go REAL old school:
Alley Cat
Flightmare
(sure, they run under DosBox, but if you've been a lifelong mac user, then you've never played them and they are definitely "must play classics".
posted by zerokey at 5:46 AM on July 4