Must play PC games  

I really enjoyed Painkiller. It's just a fast shoot-everything-that-moves FPS. It's just mindless destruction, which is just what I like. heh. It runs great even on my 1.8GHz P4 w/ an ATI 9600XT.

I would also check out Unreal Tournament 2004, Far Cry, and Doom 3. Those look absolutely amazing with decent hardware. They are all FPSs as well, which is about all I ever play on a PC.

Congrats on the new PC purchase. Enjoy!

Half-Life 2, to me, is a must play game.

Ditto on HL2, especially if you like the Halo games. But you need some fairly serious hardware for it, including a good video card (i.e. not MB built-in video). If you're not sure get the demo first.

I also only started playing PC games a few weeks ago when I got my new Dell Inspiron XPS. I also have Far Cry, but haven't yet played it.

Dean

I'll 3rd the HL2 reconmendation,not to mention CS Source and HL2 Deathmatch.

Far Cry....best shooter I've played in a while...

Half-Life 2....awsome game as well


If you haven't played PC games in 5yrs, be sure to check out Max Payne 1&2. Also, Call of Duty is really good

Ditto all of the above. I picked up the COD expansion United Offensive last weekend. I had forgotten what an incredibly realistic war game that was.

One addition, since it retails for about half the others, is Riddick. Cool game.

HL2 plays decently even on older hardware, according to the reviews. It will really take advantage of higher end stuff though.

Halo 1 looks much better on PC than Xbox (including widescreen), but I like using the Xbox controller better. Now that game does need some serious hardware to run correctly.

Remember on PCs you have the mod community as well that have really done some neat stuff.

My purchased PC games of recent:

Far Cry
Doom 3
Half Life 2
Call of Duty
Battlefield Vietnam
Unreal Tournament 2004

The whole Battlefield genre is a fun PC series that has had a mod following for years.

How much power is required for the game to run smoothly?

Halo PC needs a 9800pro or better, just to run.

The 6800 is a great video card. Looks like you have plenty of computer to run today's games.

now I just got to figure out which one to buy first .



You can download HL2 from Steam, and while that's downloading you'll have plenty of time to run to the store for the others. Maybe stop for lunch and take a quick trip to Vegas too.

Put it this way, I have both nVidia and ATI setups, and Halo runs much worse (even if I crank down res and options) than HL2. Of course, I only play in widescreen, so that might make a difference.

Villanman,

Games listed so far are good but I say Half Life 2 all the way!

Also, if you are willing to try something new, World of Warcraft is simply incredible.

I am usually a FPS kinda gamer and this game has completely changed my perception of how stunning an MMORPGs can be. You pay a monthly fee but it is worth it.

Review

I ran Halo PC on my XP2000+ and a Ti4200 quite well.

We've named all of the top sellers. How about some games that have gone under the radar that are still very fun? Painkiller (which was mentioned) would probably fit this category. Anyone else find some good diamonds in the rough?
Also I would suggest checking out a strategy games. Consoles don't really have them but PCs have a lot of great titles. I loved Rome Total War (another top seller) and spent about 60 hours finishing my campaign. Any other accessible games?

I've gone back and played Soldier of Fortune II a couple times. Very well made game with great graphics, good pacing, good story, etc.

I loved SoF2, not so much the single player, but the multiplayer; that was some of the most addictive gameplay I've ever experienced.

There have been rumors of SoF3 being in developement, but nothing official from Raven. Perhaps the most telling indicter was when GameStop put up a SoF3 preorder page on their web site a few months ago. They were asked to take it down once Raven caught wind of it, and nothing else was said. I doubt Raven will say anything official one way or another until Quake IV is released.

I've always thought Raven made some pretty sweet games. I'm anxious to see is if they can continue to make quality games since guys like Ken Hoekstra left the company earlier this year. Time will tell.

Medal of honor: allied assault nut here. It allows leaning while you run, for some added skill and fun in the game. No matter which new game I'm playing mohaa always drags me back, despite the dumb kid hax0rz.

If you dig Splinter Cell now you can get it for the system it was intended for. ;) There's also Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield and Athena Sword. Much of the fun is selecting and customizing your weapons between each match. The single player is also neat, as you can pre-plan the routes of several squads you set up and even give them commands in real-time. The best thing is it's not as complex as it sounds.

Far Cry and HL2 are at the top of my list, two great games.

Right now I'm playing The Chronicles of Riddick, which is surprisingly pretty good. I'm also beta testing F.E.A.R. multiplayer, this game is gonna rock folks! They still need a lot of optimizing to do for ATI cards though.

OH, MAN! I'm sooo jealous. I'm really looking forward this game. I assume your under an NDA, but if your not, please spill the beans! :D

I'm also itching for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to be released.

Nah, no NDA for this one. The game and effects are cool, but it runs horribly on ATI hardware right now, including my X800 XT PE, I have to run it at medium settings. Some things I have to set to minimal settings.

I'm sure they'll get it optimized though, it's still in beta form.

If you have a 6800, you may want to consider downloading a program called rivatuner and trying to unlock the extra pipelines and vertex shaders on your card. It has worked for me and many others but I'm not sure if it entails any risks. If successful, it will give you a nice fps boost.

My only must play game: UT2004, onslaught. Simply amazing.

So far I think Far Cry was the most overrated game last year. Definitely in the graphics department. We'll see about gameplay, but so far (midway through level 2) it's not good.

Wow, I'm surprised by that, since I thought Far Cry had the best graphics for a First Person Shooter.

I didn't fall in love with Far Cry as many of you did. I agree the graphics were great, but the gameplay to me was too shallow. The AI could have definitely been better, but eh, I'm glad you guys like it so much. Guess that means a sequel is in development.

What Far Cry is everyone else seeing? It looks like a bad cartoon to me. The gun models are not done well and the enemies are laughable. They remind me of Timesplitters. The island is amazing looking, but even with everything turned up to max (not how I play it, but I checked it out) it still wasn't even in the top 5 graphics I've ever seen.

I think you may be the only person I've ever seen that agrees with me about that. I wasn't impressed by the graphics at all (on near highest settings), and I've played through the whole game.

I know I'm just picky, though. I often look at a game and say "ick, what horrible graphics," after reading numerous reviews that say the graphics are some of the best they've seen.