Favorite PC games

I hope this hasn't been posted before...

I thought to ask because I'm hopelessly addicted to Civilization III Play the World.�My boyfriend and�I have lost countless hours to this. �We need help. I guess I want to know what else to look out for...

I'll be sharing your pain soon.� I've been looking forward to Civ III ever since I saw it on the shelf.� Sadly, my present machine is a bit too old for it, but the one arriving this week should be able to handle it. :-)

With the ancient machine, I've become hopelessly addicted to Roller Coaster Tycoon (and Civ II, which is the best I could do).� It's a shame no one will ride the ones I design... they look like fun to me.

yeah, Civ 3 PTW is quite addictive. I even changed the INI file so the turn limit is 1000 (the max possible) instead of 541, so my games last a really long time. (I'm at about year 2200 in one now)

Oh my god. I hadn't thought to do that. Thanks for nothing...now I'll never see daylight�! ��

whats wrong with not seeing daylight? Sun...bad.

heh. the best thing is if you're playing on a huge map (I even edited the map size so it's even bigger) with a LOT of civs, each turn takes several minutes, so you can do other stuff while you wait for other civs to resolve their turns.

I always liked the map that closely resembled a map of the world with all the geographical features like mountains, swamps, etc....

I may pick Civ III up now since I have nothing going on Columbus Day weekend.� Broadband network play anyone?

Yes, you do need to multi task...

So far I've been a happy camper...new laptop on my lap whist I sit on the sofa eating peanuts and watching baseball. Oh My God... I've turned into a man.

Well, the season is almost over. Perhaps I can start sitting on the sofa with laptop and painting my toenails or something more girly...

oO I don't I'm ever going to see the sun again! Oo (Just kidding)

oO It's great to be a nerd, it's great to be a nerd, the only light we ever see is from our monitor! Oo

Kristy, I was just about to say Civ III. I haven't really gotten into the "play the world" aspects of it, but when I was unemployed earlier this year, it was my biggest time waster.

Besides that game, I used to be hopelessly involved with Sim City, but I haven't picked up Sim City 4 yet. Other than that, I like the Hoyle series of games (Casino, Card, Board), and other board games (Monopoly, Yahtzee).

Tropico is fun sometimes too. I can't really play the first person shooters because of motion sickness. The only adventure game of late that I've played is Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura.

though i have admittedly never downloaded it or bought a CDROM of it for my PC, i LOVED playing tetris on my mac.

my fave that i bought for my PC{DON'T laugh at me since tis -way- outdated these days} is SIMCITY 2000

though i never re-installed it when my comp crashed in 2000. but i LOVED IT. hrm....mayhap i'll hafta reload when i get the comp back.

if i remember how to play it :P

Oh man, my fav. PC game ever = Oregon Trail 2

That game consumed soooo much of my time.� And I loved it.� It was so cool to barter with people, and 'talk" to them, and to go hunting...and my friend and I made the coolest names up for all our people.� I remember we used to have contests to see who could kill off their party first.� RIP Wernergimp.

A close second would be "Wrath of the Gods"� That was just cool.

orogon trail!!! boooyeah! word to your mother!

oh lord.� here's a dangerous subject.

kristy, i was right there with you when Civ III came out.� i think i lost an entire week of life during which i played nothing but that game and did the large play the world.

i've had so many PC game addictions over the years that it's not even comedic.� let's start with the Kings Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest games of a decade ago.� moving right along with the Wing Commander series, then cute games like Out of thie World and Blackthorne, then later with more modern entertainments like Unreal Tournament.

Warcraft III is currently one of the few PC games that i play with any kind of regularity.� i don't think i know any other fruheads who actually play it, but i'd love to get a good challenge going someday . (:

i almost failed to mention the Ultima Series, since i started playing the series on PC after 5 came out and all the way through 9.� i played games 1-4 on the commodore 64 back in the day but continued the series on PC as access to the games was a little easier by then (and gameplay was oh so much faster without the slow pace of the C64 disk drive...).

other favorites have been Manhunter, Leisure Suit Larry, Doom 1 and 2, Quake 1-3, Castle Wolfenstein, Age of Empires 2 and expansion, Warcraft 2, Starcraft (serious addiction there for quite some time), alley cat, bad street brawler, wizardry (anyone else old enough to remember that?), bards tale (beaten the series on both PC and C64), Warlords 1-3, and the list could go on and on and on...

the ultima series gets my vote since ultima 4 was my first computer game ever when i was 7 years old.� i've followed it religiously ever since.� as far as warcraft 3 still maintaining my attention, part of it has to do with the fact that a friend of mine in the chorus also plays it so he keeps me interested.� otherwise, none of my local friends are into it so it's tough to keep the interest level high.

i remember having tetris on my very first PC when i was 11 years old.� lost a number of hours there... (:

�-= george =-

Quake 1 is the best PC game ever. I've spent far too many years of my life behind the controls of my bad-ass killing machine.

SimCity 3k is also fantastic. Oh, and thanks to George for remind me of Leisure Suit Larry. *grins*

i can still remember the PC Speaker music that played whenever the game started...

and the fact that my friend's parents were extremely disturbed that i could successfully answer all of the "age test" questions at the beginning at the tender age of 11. :D

�-= george =-

SimCity 3k is also fantastic.

yes it is. and it's quite a shame that SimCity 4 is so unplayable, 'cause the graphics seem cool.

is sim city 4 really crap then? i mean, compared to sim city 3000. because it's on my christmas list. :D

ugh, yeah. don't waste a spot on your list for that game. the graphics are impressive, as is the intricacy. but there is absolutely no game play.

for one, they've done away with auto-terraforming. now you get a completely flat region and have to manually terraform each section of it yourself - it does edge matching so the region will eventually look nice overall, but that's too time consuming for those of us who just want to get right in and start building a city.

and they changed the 3-d view to one that's a lot harder to visualise than in SC3k. it's more of a straight on view than a corner view, which makes it much harder to put down roads and power lines.

there are a few interesting things if the game can hold your attention long enough to get there - you can have "specialized" sections in a region. remember the neighbour deals from 3000? well, in this, you get to build the neighbours, too. so one spot can build a bunch of power plants to provide power for the metropolis next door. and so on. also, the notification system is a little better - it'll tell you which zones aren't developing because they need transportation or water or power. makes it much easier to figure out where you need roads.

but then, I never really got far enough into the game for any of it to matter. I gave up very quickly. it just wasn't worth my time.

How funny that this thread showed up at the same time as the latest Penny Arcade

:D

I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it. I haven't played it in some time now (and I don't have the latest expansion pack), but I used to play that game for hours on end.

I could never really get into SimCity, because it was just so hard. Maybe they've improved it since the version I played, though, which was so old it didn't even have numbers after the title. I played it on a 386. {g}

I am all over that! :) The Sims is a good way to kill an *entire* day in front of the computer. Insane amounts of fun!

Besides, it's really cathartic to make a Sim of someone you hate and then totally trash it's life. *g*

I'll start a new sub-thread because this just popped into my head.

My first PC was my Commodore 64 with a TAPE DRIVE!!! I waited like, an hour, so I could load and play Frogger...Then the cartridges came! Asteriods!!! Then the floppy disk and Oregon Trail (much more fun for those of us that live in Oregon and are just trying to get home!).

Then I went to a computer�geek convention (read: meeting of other Commodore enthusiasts at the local library) where someone gave me the text game of Hitchhikers. And life stopped. It was so frustrated buy the damn buffered analgesic I never thought I'd make it out of my house before the bulldozers knocked it over. Weeks I spent working out that game!

I'm getting all nostalgic..sniff, sniff...But I think I'll get over it by going home tonight and wiping out the Ottomans...

ahhh the commodore 64.� oh how i loved that machine.� so much so that i have three working ones now, a whole slew of diskette software, a couple of tape drives, a few disk drives, two monitors (bruce rose, you are my god), and several PC emulators just in case i don't feel like hooking it all up.� the first playable game i had on it was the cartridge for Jumpman Jr., which is still one of my favorites to this day.

hitchhikers guide to the galaxy was a ridiculously difficult game to play.� if i had to play it again today, i don't think i would be able to make it through the entire thing simply because i don't have the mental fortitude i once had. (:

what other games do you recall that you enjoyed on that system?

have fun wiping out the ottomans!

�-= george =-

air rally, battle knights, all smiles, summer olympics, spider man &capt. america. xaxxon, super xaxxon, spy hunter, tapper, the list goes on.

Ok...the Ottomans are toast but the Koreans and French delared war on me as well...Ack. Kristy Needs Tanks!

And you CAN play HHGTG here: http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html

I spent a few weeks two summers ago learning to play again. I had to go online for hints and I'm still not sure how I got through it the first time.�Turn on the lights, put�on the dressing down, take the analgesic and go lie down outside...that should get you started...

I'm quickly losing the topic at hand as I discuss Civ3 strategy, but oh well...

the thing I always do when I play, since I tend to be the leader in science and cash, is when someone declares war on me, I get their nearest neighbours to declare war on them (because I essentially have infinite bargaining power). then their military is spread thin and they all but forget about me (and if they don't forget about me, there are usually other civs in my territory to care of the problem :). in 20 turns, I make peace while everyone else is still at war with each other.

I have a similar strategy...I prefer the play the religious civs allowing me to kick butt culturally (four foreign cities have joined me in this game alone) and change governments without losing time...this allows me to catch up scientifically. With good city management I can garner some cash but never as much as I'd like. I also horde resources like there is�no tomorrow and that works mighty nice on convincing other civs they need to go to war for me. I've no fear in this game but I could only get through 2 hours worth last night...This work stuff really interrupts my world vision.

heh. I think the best is religious and scientific (I think that's the Babylonians) - you get a TON of half price buildings, and a free advance each age, which is huge.

but I like expansionist and industrious - having the double speed workers is great, especially when steam power comes along. and the scout at the beginning allows you to grab resources really fast, because you know exactly where to put cities.

I was just introduced to this game by my sso.� Dude.. I'm an everquest addict now.

evercrack?� gah.� pure tripe.

the guys who started everquest based the entire game on a free mud that they were partially in charge of at once.� they took plenty of specific notes, ripped off all of the subject matter, then created everquest based on something was entirely someone elses creation and now are rather rich as a result of that.

i have no respect for plagarists.

�-= george =-

eek!� I didn't know this.�

i mean now, it's evolved into what it is now and is almost unrecognizeable from the original game, but it's still built on LIES!� DECEIT!� DISHONESTY!�� BAD HAIR!

and stuffs. :D

�-= george =-

Everything is built on bad hair.� Do you know what the name of the game was they took it from?� If I'm going to feel like a horrible rotten person playing Everquest, I need an alternative!!

don't laugh, but SW:Galaxies gets a lot of play in my house...�to the point that EverCrack has been uninstalled.�

i'd thought about star wars galaxies� but two things kept me away from it:

it's an online role playing game, and school keeps me totally tied up to the point where i would be useless at an online role playing game due to lack of time spent on it, and the fact that it's made by the same people. (:� the former plenty more than the latter, but still. :D

i've heard good things about the game, but it's just a lack of time at this point.� if i actually had time, i probably would have kept up on my Earth and Beyond account ... laugh if you will, but when my friend and i were involved in the beta test, we were amazed at how huge the "universe" was ... it was fun to explore.� it got boring real quick tho.

�-= george =-

I don't have the time to be playing online games.� I get home at midnight most nights because of the barbershop thing, show-going thing, Beatle thing, this thing, that thing.

And I've heard stories of wives saying to their husbands, "It's either Everquest, or ME!" and the husband chooses Everquest.� That is just sad and disturbing.

it's sad but not entirely surprising.� fantasy is, after all, far more interesting than the wiles of reality...

or so they say.

�-= george =-