quick saved – the pc gamers blog

Spoilers

I just finished Prey and I am ashamed I had originally thought of not even including it on the list.  I am not sure how or why I never played this when it was released.  I didn’t even know it was made by Human Head, who also developed Rune which was one of my favorite games of all time.  Anyway obviously I enjoyed it.  I wish it was longer, but other than that it was FPS greatness.  I know a lot FPS purists hated the death system, and although I think it made the game too easy, I really think it added to the immersion and kept the story and game moving along at a perfect pace.  The story was interesting, and with very good voice acting I was totally immersed in the game pretty much the whole 7 hours it took to complete it.  I have a feeling that once I am done with the 45 days, this game will stand out as the biggest surprise.

Titan Quest is up next, if anyone wants to coop it, toss me a message.

Spoilers below.

Well it was over to quickly, but I thoroughly enjoyed Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2.  Playing them back to back makes it very clear how much better episode 2 is than 1, however both are still gaming greatness.  As of right now it would be hard for me to argue the HL2 series not being the series of the decade.  Character development, level design, graphics, voice acting, facial animations, and music are all incredible.  The engine holds up amazingly well considering it is almost 7 years old now.  It is a shame we won’t see episode 3 before the end of the decade (with Valve we might not see it until the end of the next decade).  Anyway, I feel sorry for the rest of the FPS’s on the list, it will be very hard for them to compete.

Spoilers below.

Well after 3 days I finally beat Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.   I have to say that even though I tried to stick to the main quest (I did some side quests here and there) I still very much enjoyed the game.  I had planned on doing more exploring and such, but I had some very untimely game crashes that added quite a bit of extra time to my play through.  I really wanted to finish the thieves guild quest line and such, but in the end I decided it would be best to just stick to the main quest line.  On a normal play through this is the type of game I would have spent hundred’s of hours on and probably never finished, but honestly I am glad I stuck to this format and did complete it because the ending is very good.  I will post some screen shots, and try not to spoil too much.

Half-life 2 episodes are up next.

Spoilers below!

A lot of distractions today, but thankfully I finally beat AOE3.  I was fairly disappointed though.  Let me start out by saying I am a huge  Ensemble Studios fan, Age of Empires 2  + Conquerors and Age of Mythology rank up there as my 2 favorite rts’s of all time.  But this one fell short.  I disliked the story (which involved an evil cult which took 3 generations to finally kill, preventing them from getting the fountain of youth).  I disliked the card and experience system (I’ve never been a fan of having to leave the action in a rts to call in reinforcements, let me hotkey it or something).  And most of all I disliked the AI.  They constantly had pathing issues, I couldn’t do formations and microing was all but impossible.  Past games aoe games have had ai issues, I had hoped with this one they would have finally fixed it.  All that said though, I feel like I filled my aoe fix.  I was going to go back and play aoe2 at some point, but I think aoe3 was satisfying enough to where I won’t need to.

Tomorrow is going to be Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  I hear that is going to be near impossible to finish in 2 days (especially when I have 5 hours dedicated to tv on Sunday with the Chargers game and Dexter).  But I will do my best, and any advice is definitely welcome.

Psyconauts spoilers below!

Wow, did I barely survive this game.  There was at least 5 times I was going to throw my keyboard at my monitor and rage quit Psychonauts.  It took me 14 hours, and I really wasn’t trying to 100% it.  I think I was only level 65 at the end.  Most of my 14 hours was trying to figure out how to beat a certain boss, or doing everything possible in the milk man level wandering around for hours trying to find the fucking plunger.  In the end though, what an amazing game.  There is definitely a true sense of accomplishment.  If I had to do it again though, I wouldn’t be so stubborn and I’d actually use a guide, and I’d also spend some time trying to find my wired 360 controller, as mouse and keyboard for this game makes the platforming very challenging (especially on the last platforming part where you are chasing your dad, racing away from the water, those fucking fences took me an hour until I finally got lucky).

Tim Shafer is really a genius.  The characters, the story, the humor was all awesome (albeit a little crazy).  Anyway, this is another game that is definitely worth the 5 or 10 bucks if you haven’t played it yet.   Tomorrow is Age of Empires 3, so it should be a little bit easier.  Stay tuned.

Spoilers below!!

I finished the crazy comic book game known as Freedom Force vs. the 3rd Reich.  I felt like the I should have played the last 3 hours high though.  The story went on a crazy psychedelic  mix of the Jean Grey story from X-Men, an episode of sliders, and Wolfenstein for the second half of the game.  I very much enjoyed the first half of the game.  As it all felt relatively new, and all the character back stories were funny and incredibly well voice acted comic book cliche’s.  But the game wore very thin after that.   The game play is basically the same from beginning to end, with the only new elements being added is new super hero’s, which is where another problem comes up.  I really think they should have done fewer super heroes, but given them a much larger variety of skills to use.  You end up really only using 2 skills per super hero, and the best super hero’s you don’t even get to use a lot of the game (specifically El Diablo, who is funny as hell and has awesome spells but is locked out the last 4 levels).  The boss battles were way to easy as well.  If you manage your team right you can almost always beat every boss without losing a team member.  That being said, this game is definitely on the brink of being a great game.  It is too bad 2k doesn’t have another one planned.  Anyway I definitely recommend picking this up on Steam, it is only $5.  Even if you only play the first half the game, you will definitely get your moneys worth.

Screems:

Up next is Psychonauts which will be a nice departure from killing Hitler again. Stay tuned.

Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich is next up.  Should be another fun game as it is developed by one of the great PC developers, Irrational Games.  I played the original Freedom Force and really enjoyed it so I imagine more of the same.

Note there is spoilers below.

It 0nly took about 6.5 hours but I finished Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30.  All in all a solid game.  It didn’t age as well as I had hoped, but I still enjoyed it.  The squad system worked very well, especially for a PC game where squad based games tend to get overly complicated.  It was as simple as selecting the squad you want, aiming to the location you want them to go, and right clicking. You can also aim at the enemy and right click to have the suppress fire, which makes flanking very easy.  The game was a little harder than I expected, primarily because I tried playing like CoD or any fps really but you quickly realize you have to use your squad to suppress so you can flank.  My only complaints really are the voice acting was pretty week.  There were a couple good performances, but overall most of the voice actor’s didn’t sound like professionals (I noticed in the credits for vo’s there was a couple of the programmers, that is never good).  Also the last mission happened to be the easiest.  It involved escorting tanks up hill 30 to kill a couple Panzers.  It was one of the few missions where I didn’t die once, and was really just able to speed through it.  Anyway, either way it was a good quick game to start out with.  Go HERE for all the screens I took.

The first game I shall complete in my quest to conquer the best PC games since 05 is Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30.  Why Brothers in Arms?  For a couple reasons actually.  First, World War 2 games have been overwhelmingly popular this decade.  And from what I have read and heard this is the crème de la crème of WW2 games.  Secondly many reviews have mentioned how similar it feels to the amazing HBO series “Band of Brothers.”   And if that is the case, I am sure I will no doubt enjoy Road to Hill 30, as good WW2 stories are something I always love.

Road to Hill 30 was released in early 05, which makes it the oldest FPS on my list by well over a year.  It is also the only game to use the ancient Unreal Engine 2.0, which may not have aged as well as some of these other engines.  We will see though, it does 2560×1600 resolution native which is always a good sign.

Anyway, I am excited to start and I will be sure to update this post with screens, and twitter with commentary.

Also remember to click the about button above if you want to see the game’s list again, or why I am doing this and such.

Tomorrow I am going to start my death march.  I am going to try to complete 30 of the best PC games from the second half of this decade, all in 45 days or less.  For a who, what, where, why, when and how visit the about page HERE.

So what games am I going to complete? Here is the list, in the order in which I will be playing (trying to be as chronological as possible):

1. Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30
2. Freedom Force vs. the 3rd Reich
3. Psychonauts
4. Age of Empires 3 + War Chiefs + The Asian Dynasties
5. Elder Scrolls IV: The Oblivion
6. Half-Life 2: Episodes 1 & 2
7. Prey
8. Titant Quest + Immortal Throne
9. Company of Heroes + Opposing Fronts
10. Neverwinter Nights 2 + Mask of the Betrayer + Storm of Zehir
11. Sam and Max Season 1 & 2
12. Supreme Commander
13. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl + Clear Sky
14. Bioshock
15. World in Conflict
16. The Witcher
17. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
18. Mass Effect
19. Crysis + Warhead
20. Far Cry 2
21. Fallout 3
22. Dead Space
23. Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3
24. King’s Bounty
25. Grand Theft Auto IV
26. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
27. Mirror’s Edge
28. Resident Evil 5
29. Borderlands
30. Dragon Age: Origins

I will update this page every time I start and complete a game, and also will continually update twitter as I play games.  So visit here often, and follow my twitter (especially when I am playing a game you’ve beat, as I am sure there will be points where I need help).