PC Gamer - March 2012

TOP 100 GAMES

38 Half-Life Release: 1998 Chris T: “Scripted sequence” wasn’t always a dirty phrase, and Half-Life’s pace and spectacle is why. It didn’t need to take control away to tell you a complete story, a feat that few games have ever managed. That scientist getting dragged into a vent is the precursor of every civilian we’ve ever been forced to watch die in Call of Duty, and I know which game I’d rather play. Rich C: Half-Life was one of those rare games that made everything before it suddenly impossible to play any more. It put you right in the middle of the action, never wasted a moment unless you count the ones spent in Xen, and made it all seem so effortless.

37 Super Meat Boy Release: 2010 Chris A: Several decades’ worth of platforming rever- ence, subtly disguised as a highly-addictive, gorgeously-animated indie game! Tough and cathartic.

35 Age of Empires II Release: 1999 Josh: StarCraft II can shove it. I don’t want your fancy space- ships and weird aliens! I want a pile of historical civilizations stabbing each other with pointy sticks that evolve into iron spears. The graphics are homely nowadays, but the countering gameplay is still as addictively expansive as ever. This year’s Age of Empires Online is a decent companion, but nothing beats the real thing with 18 unique civilizations.

34Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar Release: 1985 Logan: Years after I first played it, Ultima IV remains a singular experience because it makes you both hero and villain, on a quest to purify yourself and become worthy of the title of Avatar. It was, and still is, role-playing at its finest.

33The Witcher 2 Release: 2011
Nathan: Some games offer you “choices.” Maybe some dialog changes.
Maybe you lose one party
member you didn’t care all that
much about in the first place
(I’m looking at you, Kaidan).
Witcher 2 ’s second act was
completely different based on
your decisions. BioWare, I
believe you just got beaten at
your own game.

32Batman: Arkham City Release: 2011 Chris A: Asylum could be called the greatest detective game of all time, but City is the greatest Batman game. It has tone and music that are similar to the recent films, the voice actors from Batman: The Animated Series, and a storyline inspired by the No Man’s Land comic series. But more to its credit, throwing all of Batman’s villains into a less linear, open-world game forced players to make tough decisions, to think like Batman. “Do I rescue that hostage, or finish this fight...think, Bruce! THINK!”

31 The Last Express Release: 1997 Rob: World War II looms so large that pre-World War I Europe is nearly forgotten. Yet Jordan Mechner vividly recreated that lost world from a few railroad cars and a handful of characters, as they journey aboard the Orient Express in late July, 1914. It’s a heartbreaking allegory that never feels pedantic, and it humanizes the tragedies of the 20th century.

30Star Wars: TIE Fighter Release: 1994 Rob: Improving on X-Wing while avoid- ing the feature bloat and absurd difficulty that hobbled games like Alliance, TIE Fighter is still the ultimate Star Wars space combat game. It also enriches the universe, showing subtle facets of the Empire that Lucas never explored, like the fine line between good intentions and imperialism. It’s a game about the kind of people who “just followed orders.”

29 DCS: A- 10 Warthog
Release: 2011
Andy: Easily the best combat simulation on today’s market. Eagle Dynamics’ insane
level of detail and authenticity
transform this Russian-built
study sim into a legitimate
weapon of war. Mate this Hog
to a good HOTAS setup and
you’ll be the undisputed bully of
the battlefield.

28Deus Ex Release: 2000 Tom F: The more great games come out, the more Deus Ex ’s specific virtues come into focus. It’s not the only game where stealth, shooting and exploration are all options. But it’s the only one where the shooting is so dicey that you’re desperate to avoid it, the stealth feels panicky and improvised, and exploration reveals clever ways to use the game’s systems to trick and trap people. It’s a near perfect formula, one we’ve never completely recaptured. Tom S: Half the fun of Deus Ex is talking about it afterwards. Did you go through the window or out the door? Frontal assault or crawl through the vents? Even now, years later, someone will tell me a completely new way to approach a problem and I’ll rush back to the game, desperate to see if it really works.

27The Curse of Monkey Island Release: 1997 Josh: Unlike the other Monkey Islands, Curse doesn’t need a revamp. Its animated graphics are the perfect fit for LucasArts’ cast, like Murray the demonic talking skull and that tiny jerk-of-a-pirate voiced by Gary Coleman.

26 Command & Conquer:
Red Alert
Release: 1996
Tyler: Two sides, two primary resources (ore and power), straightfor-
ward unit balancing, and an
angry bald dude—who needs
more in an RTS? And the easily
moddable “ rules.ini” file kept it
continuously fresh (my attack
dogs had rocket barks!).
Evan: I love that damn Har-
vester truck. I love the way its
metal jawbone hungrily, inde-
pendently raises and lowers to
hurl ore from the front of the
truck into the bed. Other RTSes’
gatherers bore me. You can
have hero Probes or SCVs in
StarCraft, I guess, but Harvest-
ers are practically pets in Red
Alert. They occasionally get lost.
They fetch stuff for you. You’d
roll your eyes when they
revealed your position. And
you’re sad when they die. I love
the complex relationship I have
with that little guy. Oh, and Hell
March—what an incredible
Communist hymn.

25 Unreal Tournament 2004 Release: 2004 Evan: Instagib is god- damn ballet. It’s one of FPS gaming’s purest modes: the unending, tense dance of connecting a hitscan laser with other players at high speed. Chris C: UT2004’s Assault maps are unrivaled in pacing and tension. Hopping along a speeding tank-truck as shock-rifle orbs detonate behind you, defending the bridge controls before boarding the mobile missile silo, watching your teammates miss the jump and pancake hilariously under the treads...pure shooter bliss.

24FreeSpace 2 Release: 1999 Tyler: The space combat simulation genre is a little sparse these days, but back in 1999 it birthed FreeSpace 2, which still features the most enthralling zero-G dogfights I’ve ever faced. Rob: The most unforgettable set-pieces in the space combat genre, like running battles through storm-tossed nebulae, or racing through a battlefield to outrun an exploding star. Tyler: The nebulae! Oh the nebulae! The space in FreeSpace 2 may seem dated now, but I’m still impressed by its celestial vistas.

23Grim Fandango Release: 1998 Rob: Grim’s greatest achievement is its balance between humor and genuine darkness. Never has a field of flowers been so horrifying as at the end of this game. Logan: Every character feels like a world unto themselves: the tough crime boss with a soft spot for a vain beatnik, the little angelita who cries when you mention her parents, an ambitious coat-check girl, and lonely, patient Flores who waits an eternity for his wife. You become privy to their quirks and their secret longings. For all its style, imagination, and flaming beavers, it’s Grim’s unforgettable cast that places it among the greatest games ever—and the only one I’ve ever felt homesick for after I finished.

22League of Legends Release: 2009 Josh: It’s the mark of a truly great game to murder your addiction to its predecessors. Riot has moved the gameplay of this genre so far forward that it’s almost impossible to look at the “old-school” DOTA-style games coming out with any excitement. Mundo and crew are carrying the banner forward, without any reason to look back. Not only that, the game’s free-to-play formula is still the best model in the industry for letting paying players and free-loaders play side-by-side without detriment.

21Left 4 Dead 2 Release: 2009

Evan: If you aren’t downloading custom campaigns for L4D2 yet, you’re missing out on the best free content in gaming. There’s a library of about 350 community campaigns living on www.l4dmaps. com, and dozens of them are more clever and less predictable than what Valve made.

Start with Questionable Ethics (and watch for its upcoming sequel), then go get Helm’s Deep Reborn, Bedrooms 3, and Dead Before Dawn DC. In one called Urban Flight, our group fell through a set of damaged floorboards and found ourselves in a Witch brothel. Between us and the door? Six wailing zombie women with our unhappy endings in mind. Who cares if it was unbalanced— there was enough tension in the air to kill an adult alligator.

20Mass Effect Release: 2007 Logan: I have never understood the appeal of Star Wars; at least, not until I played Mass Effect. The complete immersion into a world—a universe—that Star Wars fans feel is what I experienced after my first two missions. The only fault I find with it are the Para-gon/Renegade choices: the Renegade options you have throughout your missions ultimately feel out of sync with the larger story arc. It’s the Paragon options that feel right to me; the series of tough choices, many of them resulting in horrific unintended consequences, that forge Shepard into an officer capable of leading the effort to save mankind.