[Maestro]

Since I've upgraded to an Intel Mac, I loaded up Vista and I now have a morbid curiosity.

What are the essential Windows games? I haven't played Half Life yet, that's on my list.

[Janichsan]

When you haven't got any Half-Life 2 game yet, I'd suggest the Orange Box: it gives you all the Half-Life you need. HL1 hasn't really aged in grace, so you could skip that. Apart from that, Bioshock comes into mind, Planescape: Torment, maybe FarCry (although it is slightly overrated), Mass Effect could be worth it (I didn't play it yet - I'll wait till the price drops), Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy) would be one of my recommendations... and that's about it from my side. I haven't seen that many Windows only games that actually turned out to be worthwhile in hindsight.

[teflon]

Ok, as janichsan said, Orange Box and Bioshock, and maybe some of the others he mentioned (though I havent played them).
Then weve got:
Supreme Commander, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (I guarantee it will BSOD on you, so save regularly), World in Conflict, STALKER, FEAR, and Gears of War (seeing as it wont be out on the mac for some time...). Those are my big ones, but theres plenty of other games out depending on what you like to play.

enjoy

[ant on holiday]

if you like rpgs titan quest is good.
if you like games like WoW theres lord of the rings online. theres an expansion coming out for it too. it costs something like 12 dollars a month
counter strike is nice too if your into first person shooters.
Its really hard to pick out the best ones, theres simply too many

[DaveyJJ]

Orange Box definitely. I'm tremendously enjoying all parts of it. I do like Titan Quest as ant on holiday mentioned for a great change from Diablo II/LoD (and you can find it dirt cheap now including expansion pack). Rome Total War. IL2 1946 for WWII combat flight sim nuts ... although Storm of war: Battle of Britain (Hurricanes!!!) is being released very soon from Oleg so I'd wait for that. Lots more great PC-only titles, I'm sure as well. But there's only so much time during the day.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

I think HL1 is still worth playing myself.

Dawn of War + many expansions.
Beyond Good & Evil
System Shock 2
Bioshock
STALKER
Far Cry + Crysis (if you like shooters with flexible gameplay, but don't mind the stoopid)

But mostly the Orange Box.

[AussieMacGamer]

Am i the only one who thinks Far Cry 1 is a really boring game? I mean, if you like boring stories, told with bad voice acting, through mediocre gameplay situations that are all frustratingly hard? Then by all means play Far Cry. If you want to see that game concept polished? Then Crysis is worth looking at (i am really enjoying playing through it again and again on Delta).

But since i have been adventuring in windows i have really enjoyed:
Bioshock
The Orange Box
Morrowind:GOTYE
Crysis
Company of Heroes
Mass Effect
Assassins Creed (took me a second play through to really see past its shortcomings)
Max Payne 1 with the Kung Fu 3.0 Mod
Gears Of War


Man i have wasted at least a living month on all those titles put together (theyre only half of them). Have fun!

[Janichsan]

AussieMacGamer, on September 4th 2008, 04:55 PM, said:

Am i the only one who thinks Far Cry 1 is a really boring game? I mean, if you like boring stories, told with bad voice acting, through mediocre gameplay situations that are all frustratingly hard? Then by all means play Far Cry. If you want to see that game concept polished? Then Crysis is worth looking at (i am really enjoying playing through it again and again on Delta).

Actually, I prefer FarCry over Crysis. It's not a very intelligent game (as I said: it's overrated), but rather fun. Crysis however is barely anything but a graphics demo.

[DaveyJJ]

AussieMacGamer, on September 4th 2008, 10:55 AM, said:

Company of Heroes

AussieMacGamer must be a young, quick-reflexed (and he assures me, handsome) dude because I can't slow this beautiful game down enough to play it and have any hope of winning. For this type of fix I need to go to Memoir '44 (board game) with new Med pack instead.

[Sneaky Snake]

How good is Half Life (either of 'em) on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best game you've ever played in your life. I've never played or even seen the game being played.



-Snake

[teflon]

HL1 is these days more of a 6. Average gameplay with a fairly good story.
HL2 is maybe an 8 now, but its graphics still hold up very well, the story is pretty good, and the action is still pretty high up there compared to recent offerings. Not a cinematic as CoD4, and not as deep and considered as Bioshock, its still good.
HL2E1 is a 7, as it just rehashed what went on in HL2 as you try to escape the city. Nothing to shout about, but not terrible either.
HL2E2 again doesnt really try much new, but Id say its an 8 again. Going up against the ant lions is tricky, and the finale is really something to behold.

My advice is to skip HL1, as it doesnt have much to offer these days aside from its story, which can just be used as background for HL2 really. Get the Orange Box as it includes everything from HL2 onwards and then the addition of Portal (easily one of the top 5 games of the last 2 years in my book purely in terms of atmosphere) which is short and sweet, and Team Fortress 2 and you have ridiculous amounts of value for your money.

get it...

well? what are you waiting for?

go on!!!

[Janichsan]

In my opinion you could deduct 1 point each for HL1, Episode 1 and Episode 2, but basically everything is said.

[AussieMacGamer]

Janichsan, on September 5th 2008, 02:11 AM, said:

Actually, I prefer FarCry over Crysis. It's not a very intelligent game (as I said: it's overrated), but rather fun. Crysis however is barely anything but a graphics demo.

Whats your reasoning behind that?

DaveyJJ, on September 5th 2008, 02:08 AM, said:

AussieMacGamer must be a young, quick-reflexed (and he assures me, handsome) dude because I can't slow this beautiful game down enough to play it and have any hope of winning. For this type of fix I need to go to Memoir '44 (board game) with new Med pack instead.

Hahahahaha. I never said i was any good at it! Hell this game is so hard i never clocked it. Didn't stop me from enjoying every minute of it till something else came along.

[Janichsan]

AussieMacGamer, on September 5th 2008, 09:18 AM, said:

Whats your reasoning behind that?

It was simply more fun. The AI strangely didn't feel as dumb as in Crysis and the plot - although far from being intelligent - doesn't use the stalest story cliche ever (alien invasion). Crysis has some merits, but overall it was rather mediocre. It's definitely the game I mostly regret buying at the full price.

[AussieMacGamer]

Janichsan, on September 5th 2008, 05:21 PM, said:

It was simply more fun. The AI strangely didn't feel as dumb as in Crysis and the plot - although far from being intelligent - doesn't use the stalest story cliche ever (alien invasion). Crysis has some merits, but overall it was rather mediocre. It's definitely the game I mostly regret buying at the full price.

It seems that I am the polar opposite in this case. I found everything about FarCry so hair pullingly irritating that it made me want to die. With Crysis i think Crytek have perfected open ended first person shooter game play (towards the start of the game in particular) . For instance, when given a simple task like gaining some intel located in a small camp, i can go about the rather simple task in many different ways. I can approach from anywhere i like, i can customize my weapons to suit my approach, i can use my suit to make my approach. I have this thing i do where i run into this village with nothing but my fists, and don't leave till everyone is dead. It's rather fun. Lure some enemies into a hut then jump on the roof and punch it in to crush the soldiers in the hut. Throw bins at them, throw them at them. Or i had this idea of attracting attention to myself so they call for reinforcements, hiding, then shooting the ATV when it arrives and using it to throw the whole encampment into dissaray.

I could go on, but i think my point is made. The only really dumb thing the AI does is run around like blind bats when you shoot at them from a distance. They look to where they heard the bullet land rather than where it was fired from. Even then there is a mod to correct all the AI faults now.

And as far as comparing the story goes, how is the "Scientific Experiment Gone Wrong" (played out with horrible voice acting at that) any less stale than "OMGWTF ALIENS!"?

And mind you all this comes from someone who is playing it with practically every setting on low.

[Mango]

Janichsan, on September 4th 2008, 09:11 AM, said:

Actually, I prefer FarCry over Crysis. It's not a very intelligent game (as I said: it's overrated), but rather fun. Crysis however is barely anything but a graphics demo.

++

Crysis was overrated and dull. The alien section was tedious. Far Cry, while it dragged on too long in places, was much more fun.

[Dark_Archon]

Bioshock and Mass Effect are definitely boot-into-Windows worthy. The Witcher isn't bad. If I didn't have to reboot to play it, I probably would have beaten it by now. It is right around the not worth the nuisance cutoff. The not worth playing in OS X cutoff isn't much lower.

The only other games I've played in Windows since getting an Intel Mac almost two years ago were X3: Reunion, which wasn't available for OS X when I got it (this was a very good thing... being able to play it without rebooting would have definitely had an impact on my GPA), and Planescape: Torment, which was FREAKING AMAZING.

Edit: And to clarify, the not worth playing cutoff is more due to my disinterest and somewhat unreasonable standards for games. I'm not trying to say The Witcher is a mediocre game.

[Mango]

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay.

I'm playing this right now and it's a lot of fun. Cinematic. Good mix of stealth, melee, and FPS action.

[teflon]

Bizarrely enough, Escape From Butcher Bay is already having a remake done. At the moment, I believe its just been dropped thanks to the Blizzovision merger, but if it gets picked up again (which it should) then itll be the same game with extra levels on the end to continue the story. And, of course, all in a spangly new engine.

[LoneIgadzra]

I don't get what all the crysis bitching is about. I enjoyed the popsnizzle out of the demo. Perhaps you were playing it wrong? You are supposed to play it free-form just fyi.

To the OP: Far Cry is not a must-buy unless you are a shooter fan, since while its open-area approach to level design is brilliant, the game has a lot of insanely frustrating bits. There is a demo though that's fairly representative of the best of it.

My recommendation to the OP is simply gravitate to whatever genres you prefer and play demos if they are available. Well, aside from the Orange Box which is pretty much a must-buy if you like games period. To keep abreast of new games, the 1up.com TV show is surprisingly good (even if the skits are painful).

I hear Mass Effect PC is really superb and worth getting, but aside from that what you'll find is that a lot of old games that you never got to on the Mac and now can't due to all the platform changes... well the Windows version still works. In Vista no less. An example is I am currently working my way through Fallout 2 which I never beat, which I wouldn't be doing if I didn't have a PC to play it on.

I gotta plug my own bias here: check out a game called "Nox" (googling "Nox" will just get you wikipedia, so instead search for "nox forum" which is the last vestiges of a community the game has). It's a Westwood game (makers of C&C) that came out about the same time as Diablo 2, had no Mac version, and got completely overshadowed because it superficially appeared to be a ripoff of the aforementioned clickfest, as it was also a top-down medieval RPG-ish thing. Nothing could be farther from the truth: it is a fast-paced free-form action game, not a PvE cooperative loot finding game. And it is utterly amusing. If the fun factor of a game is measured in the shear amount of hilarious crap that occurs at random in a typical match, then Nox is just about the most fun multiplayer game I own, right up there with TF2.

(For the record, I am a Diablo fan as well.)

Oh, and skip Half-Life 1. It has not aged well and is very hard to get through for a modern gamer. You will be wondering what all the fuss is about, because basically it was the first to do a lot of things that it did that now seem completely unremarkable and commonplace.