Essential games to play?

[baronjohn]

What are in your opinion the essential games that an outsider would have to play to attain basic theoretical and practical competence in the field of video gaming?

 

[Icewater]

Fallout
Deus Ex
System Shock 2
Unreal
STALKER
Total Annihilation
Freespace 2
Planescape: Torment

off the top of my head

 

[SCO]

What are in your opinion the essential games that an outsider would have to play to attain basic theoretical and practical competence in the field of video gaming?

There is no "field of videogaming"

 

[CorpseZeb]

Only one title, only one game would give an "outsider" a clearly view what gaming is about, what gaming should be - a that is - of course - The Portal (the first one).

The Portal.

Ps. ... not the Larch.

 

[Trash]

What are in your opinion the essential games that an outsider would have to play to attain basic theoretical and practical competence in the field of video gaming?

Going all monocle on us are we? Well, the question is incredibly difficult to answer. Is there a field of video gaming. Is it possible to gain a theoretical and practical competence in what amounts to play time? Are video games art? Does your question cover the entire history of video gaming? What are good games? Is that even what you want to know? Do you look at these games as a stand-alone, as part of videogaming history or in another context?

However, for a look at the different types of games throughout videogaming history the following are a basic if incredibly limited introduction.

Tetris
Super Mario Bros
Monkey Island II
X-wing
Doom
Starcraft
Fallout
Medieval: Total War
World of Goo
Mario Kart

 

[Bruticis]

No games, a 386 computer, a box of unformatted floppies, and a copy of Ultima 7. If you can get up and running with the autoexec.bat and config.sys file and format the floppies you will be awarded a certificate of "basic theoretical and practical competence".

 

[SCO]

played it first on a portable (!) 386 with a black and white monitor

 

[Bruticis]

played it first on a portable (!) 386 with a black and white monitor

 

[sgc_meltdown]

The very first pc game I got was shortly after I owned a pc for the first time (486/33) and I had to learn how to make a custom boot disk so it would run.

Somehow I was dialing into BBSes a couple of years later.

NOW I SURF THE CYBERINTERNET

 

[CorpseZeb]

… who said monocles...?

Anyway, 386 was for pussies, same goes for CRT monitors. Real men starts from 8080 and plays chess on Altair leds.

 

[Bruticis]

… who said monocles...?

Anyway, 386 was for pussies, same goes for CRT monitors. Real men starts from 8080 and plays chess on Altair leds.

Well I had to go with the min specs for Ultima 7 and that damn voodoo memory manager. I started with a trash-80 and the glorious cassettes. Dancing Demon and Haunted House were the shit back then.

 

[CorpseZeb]

Well I had to go with the min specs for Ultima 7 and that damn voodoo memory manager. I started with a trash-80 and the glorious cassettes. Dancing Demon and Haunted House were the shit back then.

Ah. TRS-80. Totally offtopic about TRS-80, we had, here in Poland, back in the late 80, clone of TRS-80 proudly named “Meritum”, supposedly destined to colonize schools but it lost in battle overpowered by mighty “Junior” (clone of ZX Spectrum with some weird stuff attached like CPM support). Hm, erm... but back to gaming – yeah – The Portal – games history, games different genres – all in one title.

 

[felipepepe]

If the guy is really an outsider to any game, System Shock 2 or Planescape would melt his brain. Go for the really classic ones, or those with a nice learning curve, much like Trash's list:

Portal (is not only a great game, but also has a nice tutorial and teaches anyone to play),
Mario Kart,
Warcarft 2,
Fallout,
SimCity 4,
Monkey Island II,
Super Mario Bros,
Maybe Minecraft?

 

[laclongquan]

Trying too hard

Fallout 2: plainly because it's better than Fallout 1, but mostly to get nongamers acquainted with the post apocalyptic settings that is very common setting of SF.

Torment: not just because it's a good game but also to get nongamers acquainted with the DnD genre. Excellent introductory materials to get familiar with DnD, then get horribly disappointed by them later on. And teaching the required action of checking your Journal.

StarCraft Broodwar: because every nongamer should know key features to playing RTS games are chain queue and efficient actions on the part of gamers. Patrician 3 can teach that but it's a bit of an acquired taste and take too long anyway. Plus SC teach paper-stone-scissors feature of RTS well.

Startopia: not only it's funny as hell, it also teach the basics of playing sim-biz well in at least 9 missions. Basically the campaign is one whole humongous tutorial. plus it's funny. Did I say it's funny before?

Zeus: A good way to learn about citybuilding games. PLus it's easy so nongamers get it better than Caesar3. Pharaoh is a bit too hard, though.

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines: An excellent introductory course about the vampire subgenre. And easy teachings for beginners in hack-and-slash action games.

Deus Ex: easy teachings for beginners in stealth action games.

The games should be played in that order.

 

[SCO]

Just give him Master of orion (1 for gods sake).

That game is like crack.

 

[Menckenstein]

Test Drive 2
Bomberman
Street Fighter 2
Duke 3D
King's Quest 5
Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
Arcanum

 

[DalekFlay]

I would assume one game a piece from every major genre is what you are looking for, and I will do so below. That said I don't think gaming is as easily summed up as that of course. Anyway...

Platformer: Super Mario World
Racer: Burnout Paradise
Shooter: Doom 2
Fighter: Mortal Kombat 2
Adventure: Sam & Max Hit the Road
CRPG: Baldur's Gate 2
Action RPG: Diablo 2
Puzzle: Bejewled 2
Open-world action: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Open-world RPG: Morrowind
Metroid-style: Super Metroid

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Baronjohn, clarify your question. Do you want:

- A list of games that someone who has never played games before should try out in order to sample the genres and get to know what they like.

OR

- A list of games for someone who already plays games but is not of the Codex Elite™ that need to played to have an intelligent monocle conversation on the relative merits of each.

 

[baronjohn]

I was thinking #1

 

[kingcomrade]

FF7
Halo
Arma 2
Modern Warfare
Serious Sam
Team Fortress 2

 

[Fens]

Ultima 7
Zork
Sam & Max
Commander Keen 4
Syndicate
Lemmings
Fallout 1 & 2
IL-2 Sturmovik
Hind
Unreal Tournament 99 and possibly 2k4
Operation Flashpoint
Serious Sam
Freespace 1 & 2
Civilization
Master of Orion 1 & 2
NHL 99
GTA 1 & 2 & Vice City
...

 

[Phage]

Sengoku Rance

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Sengoku Rance

GAHAHAHAHAHA!!

 

[Kraszu]

For some variety of good games in random order:
Master of Orion
Space Rangers 2
Gothic
Fallout
Z
Starcraft
Far Cry
Jedi knight
Star Wars: Dark Forces.
Prince of Persia the sands of time
Settlers II (I had not played the newest ones so I don't know how good they are)
Grim Fandango

And then watch them cry, as they try to have fun playing new games.

 

[Serious_Business]

theoretical and practical competence in the field of video gaming, huh

how about that

i didnt know it was imperative to systematise all that knowledge into one big field of nothingness

maybe next time in the next dimension you will have different fields of reality for your shitty shattered life that cant find unity because of abusive intellectualism