Right off the bat, if the title doesn't fully say it, let's emphasize that it's a subjective list of featured games that have had special meaning to us over the years, compiled as part of TechRadar's Video Game Week 2019.
Each selection we made has some points in common. They've all come up with new ideas or new features - moments of reflection, if you will - that have been groundbreaking, or at least refined by revolutionary concepts in one way or another, but their new take on them. Really made pop. and shine
But more importantly, games and experiences have had a significant (and lasting) impact on us over the last three decades of PC gaming, keeping us glued to our monitor for countless blurry-eyed hours.
In short, it's not just about the "best games", which of course have been executed anyway, but it's a personal journey through the games that has achieved something very memorable for us. Let's start with the title that made us buy a gaming PC in the first place: moving music and scrolling intro text.
Image Credit: LucasArts/Steam
Star Wars: X Wing (1993)
This is where it all started: the game that made us want to throw out the sponge with the Commodore Amiga and switch to a PC. Essentially, we bought a 486DX-33 computer, with a powerful 33MHz processor, for over €1,800 to play X-Wing. And that did not disappoint.
This was the first PC-based Star Wars game (or anywhere else, with the exception of arcade furniture) that manages to capture some of the true atmosphere of the movies and deliver exceptional 3D quality (at the time). ). polygonal graphics Not only that, it was well presented with cutscenes and briefings, and boasted a variety of challenging campaign-related missions.
X-Wing also specializes in fast and furious arcade-style dogfights with a generally balanced level of difficulty (although some missions can be very difficult and frustrating, it was always rewarding to end up defeating them).
Oh, and the soundtrack was huge, too: based on iMuse (previously used in LucasArts adventure games), it changed dynamically depending on what was happening on screen.
Perhaps most importantly, all the elements of attention to detail in this game - visual, sound, presentation, to the fight in the heart of space - have been added to make us feel like we really are an X-Wing pilot. And it was an awesome experience in the early 90s. A thousand pounds well spent then.
It is worth noting that there is a project to modify this classic with tasty new graphics. Color us excited, although unfortunately we have lost our X-Wing DOS disks.
Image Credit: id Software/Steam
Doom (1993)
Doom was the place where it all began for PC shooters. Granted, there was a predecessor in the form of Wolfenstein 3D, but Doom was much more sophisticated and represented the true birth of the FPS as we know it today.
Doom took advantage of graphical improvements, for starters, and even though they were technically two 2.5D shooters (ie, they had 3D feel to them, but that's not the case). were always nicely rendered in 2D with flat sprites), Wolfenstein just felt like wandering around in a brutal maze. However, Doom gave a much better illusion in three dimensions with more verticality (even if it was still in 2.5D, so you couldn't look around your mouse and could only aim in a horizontal plane).
Doom also stands out to us as the first game to induce moments of pure panic, use darkness, scare, throw evil creatures in the face, and similar movie stunts. # 39, horror.
Also, it introduced deathmatch, which was a big step forward for multiplayer games. And the first time we played a head-to-head shooter (with a serial cable connecting two PCs, let's add that), we were blown away. We quickly cut to the four-player death confrontation on the local office network, for action that's even more absorbing, frenetic, and full of dirty talk.
Other similar games have followed, such as the Doom engine-based game Heretic, but it could never exactly replicate that initial excitement, despite the introduction of cool stuff like being able to turn your opponent into a chicken. Until our next option comes to improve performance to death...
Image Credit: id Software/Steam
(Image credit: Steam)
Earthquake (1996)
It's funny to remember that we didn't really like Quake. We initially tried the single player mode and found it to be more of a joke. We scratched ourselves as the most pathetic endgame boss and wondered why all the graphics were shades of brown or grey, to match the monotonous campaign.
Even Deathmatch mode left us pretty cold on day one, leaving us wondering what the hype was all about (and there was some serious hype, not surprisingly).
But then multiplayer clicked; We quickly realized how wonderful it was and never looked back. The blistering pace of the deathmatch action, the beautifully designed levels, or some of them, we're particularly interested in DM2, DM3, and DM4, and the true 3D nature of the game that introduced shadows like shooting rockets at your opponents' feet to catch them with splashes (while jumping to get a better angle and make yourself less of a target), or things like jumping rockets. All of this adds up to an awesome multiplayer shooting experience.
Add QuakeWorld to the mix, which relaxed the network code to allow people to play with a dial-up modem (not everyone could afford an expensive ISDN line or JANET access), and ended competitive clans and leagues. played in (UKCL, as part of QPD to be precise).
We almost lost a whole year of our life because of that, huh.
Quake also marked the beginning of the sporting competition itself, with the British team being selected and the first internationals played, and of course, Thresh's notorious win in this Ferrari.
We still remember our Quake days with a loving glow (powered by a quad), and for us, this shooter has provided many of the most memorable games and moments of our lives.
Image Credit: Everquest.allakhazam.com
Ever Quest (1999)
This was our first real foray into the MMORPG world. We wanted to love Ultima Online and played it very briefly, but it never really caught on. EverQuest, for its part, took us by the skin of the neck and did not let go.
The big draw here is that developer Verant presented us with what seemed like an incredibly sprawling and mysterious world, and was also filled with other players who made sure that exploring this environment gave the impression of being so close to a "virtual world." as we have already done. never had
At the beginning of EverQuest, we fight for magical weapons for our ranger. Ambassador DVinn, extremely overwhelmed, suffered a natural disaster at Crushbone. We marvel at huge sand giants in the desert of Ro. We wonder how these teleportation arrows that high level players seemed to not have worked on more, have found their beautiful shiny red metallic armor (rubicite).
And that's at the heart of what made EverQuest amazing. It was our first MMORPG, and everything was going great. Not to mention a real sense of danger and fear of death, which resulted in a penalty for the sensations of the water. Also, if he died in a difficult area and you couldn't retrieve his body quickly, he's rotten and lost all his equipment.
EverQuest was certainly a sometimes cruel world, made all the more brutal by the game's harrowing journey, meaning that, say in Mistmoore, simply breathing down the wrong shelf could easily lure everyone in the castle down low. party. But this sense of looming danger and possible looming panic stations have made our high-level achievements seem all the more spectacular.
World of Warcraft was a great game, if not much more refined in many ways, but it still didn't capture the same sense of mystery and excitement that we experienced exploring our first MMORPG. Blizzard's game has become more of a leveling puzzle and loot dealer (with too much flying stuff, too easily), rather than an "adventure", at least for us.
Yes, we know: the sense of adventure would never last, but its presence was total. And it was definitely a beautiful thing and there was a big piece of the puzzle missing with future MMORPGs, where we knew (mostly) what was going on behind the curtain, so to speak.
Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos (2002)
Zug Zug! Warcraft III was a flagship game for us because that's where we really fell in love with the RTS genre, as it did so many different things, to great effect.
Visuals weren't just a big step up from Warcraft II; he was an excellent viewer of an RTS at the time, which was always helpful; but the single-player campaign offered an engaging story, with well-designed and well-written missions, that not only made you think, but sometimes also felt.
What really sold us on Warcraft is the RPG element that has been added to upgrade your hero character to learn new abilities. this and multiplayer. In the latter case, the game was carefully balanced between the factions and it was extremely exciting to be able to successfully manage your stack to defeat your opponent.
What was really interesting here was combining the need to build a base while guiding the hero part of killing the "fears" to level up, deftly transitioning between the two activities preparing to face the enemy. This turned out to be an extremely addictive act of micromanagement for us, and when we got off to a good start and then lost an opponent, we found an immense sense of satisfaction. Much more than we've found with previous RTS titles, be it previous Warcraft or Command & Conquer releases.
By the way, a reboot called Warcraft III: Reforged should be coming later in 2019, and it looks pretty sober. Set nostalgia on the road to maximum distortion...
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (2010)
It seems like a lot of our options are multiplayer, and here's another one. Overall, nothing was wrong with Assassin's Creed single player, but it's the introduction of online play with Brotherhood that sealed the deal for us.
Mainly because it was a very different kind of deathmatch, which wasn't about attack, but more about stealth and subtlety. Although, actually, a game we played, The Ship, had already had this kind of multiplayer game back in 2006. It was built on a cruise ship, where the passengers were targeted for murder, while the victim of someone else.
We loved The Ship, but Brotherhood took this concept to a whole new level, tweaking it with clever mechanics, from staggering walls to hiding in mobs of NPCs, and adding a neat scoring system where bonuses were racked up for thoughtful kills.
Hiding in a group of NPCs who move in level and act as mechanically as themselves, so as not to arouse suspicion in their run until the last second, when they cleverly poison them for big bonus points - it was in many ways much more satisfying. than any other shot to the head. We still remember this poison kill that earned us 3.200 points like it was yesterday…
Stone Chimney (2014)
Hearthstone continues to play online card games five years later. It's free, but spending money to buy packs will obviously give you a better selection of cards to build your decks with. Not in Arena, though: everyone is on an equal footing here, as you have to write a deck from a series of random choices of three possible cards.
And it's this sketch that excites us, especially the way the player is challenged to make selections to create a synergistic deck on the fly. It's like building a fantastic team, except with goblin rocket builders and swordfish-wielding ninja murlocs (unfortunately, Finja is no longer available in Arena) instead of athletes.
The basic mechanics of the game are also a work of art. When you have an arena draft, you win, you can possibly sweep a 12-win series, which is the ultimate goal, it's a magical feeling among our most exciting. All-time competitive moments.
We know that a lot of Hearthstone fans don't like this game mode and feel that luck is too much of a factor, whether it's in terms of game composition or changing the matchmaking system, but it's fun to see how the best players in Hearthstone the arena seem to constantly get lucky...
Apex Legends (2019)
It will certainly be a controversial choice because it is very new, the game is untested and has suffered from many problems, from bugs to complaints about the lack of content updates (although Season 3 is coming to introduce a new card) and ridiculously expensive. . game items. And we agree with some of these complaints to some extent, but still, in terms of contemporary games, this is the title that has had the biggest impact on us.
So why was Apex such a "wow" in PC gaming? Simply because at its launch, it was the game that finally pushed us to try, and fall in love with, the genre that is Battle Royale (BR), which has become such a huge phenomenon. weather.
Despite all the hype around BR, we never imagined spending our money on PUBG. After watching on Twitch, the game never really grabbed us, nor was it engaging or polite enough. Fortnite was free, a big draw and faster, but it went the other way, too cartoonish and silly. We just don't want to play a shooting game where you can throw down walls in front of you.
Apex Legends, which is also free to play, has brought the mush to the right temperature for us, in terms of speed and accessibility, while playing as a "real" shooter. Additionally, we like the hero picks, team synergies, and general interest in team play, with the brilliant introduction of a (much-copied) ping system allowing for simple and convenient cooperation between players. , even within recovery groups.
The fluid movement system, which focuses on mobility and parkour elements, and the shooter mechanics that we think are quite accurate, and contain hidden depths and shadows, make Apex Legends a successful place for PC games. until now. . It will last? The jury is out yet, but nevertheless this game has worked so well mechanically and completely opens our eyes to the world of BR that it deserves a splendid salute.