Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The mention of Metro reminds me: the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. Like the modern Fallouts, but darker, grittier, and more realistic. Also lolhard compared to your average shooter, but just stick with the M-16 analogue and a dragunov and you'll be fine. And a shotgun for close quarters fighting.

My list of PC must haves:
Shogun 2 total war
Chivalry medieval warfare (the only game I play the most these days)
Skyrim and GTA 4 (for the mods)
The witcher 2 (beautiful game)

Company of heroes is quite good if you haven't picked it up.

As far as Kotor 2 goes its ok, you get to be a jedi right off the bat, which is nice. The story however is confusing. Play through it once and without reading a wiki try and tell me what it was about. Something about some sith lords and a betrayal, and there's a guy who is always angry but its never explained who he is or why. And suddenly the good guys aren't and there's something about economics in there... yeah. After reading the old republic source book for Star Wars Saga Edition RPG it was made clear.

Dragon Age origins is cool if you haven't already played it. So is Morrowind, again I don't know if you've played it or not. Avoid the new Command and Conquer games, absolute crap.

I played a demo of C&C3. I thought it was a lot of fun (even though it ran terribly on my ancient PC).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I played a demo of C&C3. I thought it was a lot of fun (even though it ran terribly on my ancient PC).

C&C3 was pretty good, but that was the last one. RA3 was kinda fun but not that great. We don't talk about C&C4

Yeah, I know not to mention that one.

Planetside 2 has been my FPS of choice for the last few months. Got good combined arms gameplay too, with the tanks and vtol planes.

Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider, Mass Effect and Total War are all solid games that will provide endless hours of joy for you.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Ok, I probably should have put this into the OP, my bad, but:

No MMO's please.

I don't like multiplayer gaming. Never have. Destiny intrigues me (and looks gorgeous), but that's as far as it goes.

I'm not sure I would even throw defiance in as a MMO, the most interaction I have had is just seeing other people shooting guys.

The chat is very very minimal and group setting isn't really there.

If they do a free weekend I would suggest checking it out.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is head and shoulders more fun and more tonally consistent than vanilla Far Cry 3.

Dawn of War II is also a much better and more strategic game than Dawn of War, but the multiplayer community is totally gone. I miss that game dearly, since the AI is absolutely worthless to fight against.

Space Marine is a fun third person shooter with some nice and brutal hand to hand combat.

The Portal games are excellent puzzle games, and very funny.

If you're looking for indie games, Hotline Miami is excellent and has a lot to say about player agency in video games. Like Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, your appreciation of this will be higher if you're familiar with 80s music, movies, and atmosphere.

 Brother SRM wrote:
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is head and shoulders more fun and more tonally consistent than vanilla Far Cry 3.

Dawn of War II is also a much better and more strategic game than Dawn of War, but the multiplayer community is totally gone. I miss that game dearly, since the AI is absolutely worthless to fight against.

Space Marine is a fun third person shooter with some nice and brutal hand to hand combat.

The Portal games are excellent puzzle games, and very funny.

If you're looking for indie games, Hotline Miami is excellent and has a lot to say about player agency in video games. Like Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, your appreciation of this will be higher if you're familiar with 80s music, movies, and atmosphere.

I would say Blood Dragon is definitely the best bang for my buck, entertainment wise, of any game I've recently bought.

The Witcher 2 is $7 on Steam right now. You'd have to be insane not to buy it.

Thomas was alone- an indie puzzle-platformer. Normally I don't like any of those three words, but this has the best story telling and narration I've seen in a game in years- I legitimately got very emotional over these seven squares and rectangles jumping around. Sounds insane, but wait until you play it.
Worth noting- playing through it, it was around 10 hours to finish, but it's worth the ride. Oh, and don't watch too much gameplay, it's better to see for yourself when you play it.

Mount and Blade: Warband- a medieval action-RPG. Basically, you start off as a crummy little dude with basically nothing, and slowly gain better equipment and reputation in the world across several kingdoms, building up an army of men to fight with you, eventually getting enough to besiege cities and such.
There is also a multiplayer, which is basically a deathmatch game, and also a napoleonic mode, whereby two teams are pit against one another as different armies (say, france and prussian). Definitely not your regular FPS, this is a great game to mess around in, not only because it doesn't really take itself seriously, but the fanbase is one of the most hilariously stupid in any game I've played in a long time (far better/worse than TF2). So if you want a fun game to mess around in online, that's the one for you.

All my other would-be suggestions have already been said (skyrim, fallout etc.)

Kerbal Space Program is also on sale this weekend for $15. In short, it's a game where you have a big toybox of parts and can use them to build various spacecraft. For example, one player on another forum is slowly landing an entire flotilla of rovers on Mars, which can all connect together into an even bigger rover as a mobile Mars base.

I've extracted what I've played from your list as I would put it, in order of best first, with a few additions in yellow:

Deus Ex Human Revolution - oh my fething god, seriously, play this. JUST. PLAY. IT.
Mass Effect Trilogy Compilation - as you've probably heard, the ending may disappoint, but doesn't ruin what is otherwise an excellent trilogy.
Dishonored - awesome for a lot of the same reasons as Deus Ex.
Bioshock Infinite - fantastic story, the gameplay is great but you kinda have to force yourself out of *just* shooting to appreciate it. (add Bioshock 1 and 2 here if you haven't played them...)
Borderlands 2/Borderlands - beware, these can be slow getting off the ground if you're not playing co-op.
Dawn of War 2/DoW2: Retribution - Great strategy games, but far departed from DoW1. It's squad-based/skirmish level, and because of that, there's a lot more emphasis on each unit's individual abilities as well as being able to develop the characters and plot more. Retribution is the best and most complete version, what with campaigns for all races and more solid co-op/multiplayer modes, but you won't fully appreciate its story without playing at least DoW2 first and preferably Chaos Rising too.
Crysis 1 - decent shooter, but beginning to show its age. Still fun messing with the AI though.

The Elder Scrolls V 5 Skyrim Legendary Edition - this actually slots in somewhere between Bioshock and Borderlands for me, but if you want to play anything else this year at all, leave this til last. Seriously. It's THAT big. I've played about 150 hours so far and I haven't even found half the map locations yet...and that's without any DLC.

Dawn of War 2 (and expansion)
- Strong single player story
- light RPG elements
- Warhammer related

It is a very different game then the original, but totally worth play.

I would second Fafnir's listing of Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery EP.

Torchlight II

My local EB should have the DoWII that comes with all three related games in a single pack. Hopefully the trade in money from PS3 Skyrim and Max Payne 3 can cover it.

Mass effect 1,2 and 3 Provides hours of great gaming, they all start off a bit slow and boring. but suddenly get a rush 25% through the games. and they ae hard to put down after that point. Mass effect 3 also provides some excellent co-op play multiplayer (just in case).

Witcher 2 is an amazing game, one of my favs. it looks stunning, and is an epic game to play through.

Fallout 3 + expansions offers a RPG game that has some brilliant entertaining moments.

Fallout las vagas + expansions in my book its not as engrossing as fallout 3, but its in fact a bigger and more in depth game. Still a brill game. put personally it didn't pull me in as much as 3 did. But still a must play.

Portal and Portal 2. there is a reason these games are so popular. its almost as though the puzzle solving game play is non important, its all about the interaction between you and the environment and our special friend Glados and wheetly. A MUST PLAY.

Xcom is a great little strategy game although it can be frustrating at times. but still a great game.

Supreme commander 2 a excellent RTS game one of the last of the good ones.

Left 4 Dead 2 can also be great fun on your own or in multiplayer. Its has a ton of mods and missions to down load including a Spacehulk mod. And gives you never ending zombie stomping action.

 cerbrus2 wrote:
Portal and Portal 2. there is a reason these games are so popular. its almost as though the puzzle solving game play is non important, its all about the interaction between you and the environment and our special friend Glados and wheetly. A MUST PLAY.

Ooh, yes, this. It's an FPS - first-person-PUZZLER - that's a hell of a lot better than many first-person-shooters.

I have Portal. It was loads of fun, even if my computer chugged towards the end. It'll be fun to play it again with no slowdowns.


I've heard that should avoid The Witcher, but play The Witcher 2. Why is the first one one to avoid?

I know you said no MMO's.

But SWTOR is free to play and worth trying.

The Storyline is fully voice acted, and you can play through 90-95% of the quests solo.


You can play it pretty much like a single player game if you wanted.

Rome: Total War 2 should be fantastic.

But looks like you have covered my favorite pc games of late. I usually enjoy reloading older games for a bit of fun when my gaming ADD kicks in, like home world 2.

Oh, Space Marine and all of the DoW 2 games of course.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I have Portal. It was loads of fun, even if my computer chugged towards the end. It'll be fun to play it again with no slowdowns.


I've heard that should avoid The Witcher, but play The Witcher 2. Why is the first one one to avoid?

I never played the 2nd one, but I hated the first Witcher game. The plot was very meandering, there were lots of times where I had no idea why I was in a place or if it was important or not. Plus, I personally felt the writing quality was shoddy, especially when it came to tone. It was meant to be this grim, oppressive setting where science is very low, yet your character talks in modern terms about science and genetics, it was very jarring. And it had a lot of times where it felt more like a 14 year old's "mature" fanficiton, stuffed with sex for no reason other than sex (and you get a sexy trading card for sex!).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I have Portal. It was loads of fun, even if my computer chugged towards the end. It'll be fun to play it again with no slowdowns.


I've heard that should avoid The Witcher, but play The Witcher 2. Why is the first one one to avoid?

It's quite frustrating in my opinion. In monster hunting quests you have to have read the book about those monsters in order to complete it. They're only available from very particular vendors and are expensive. So you could try and find one that's free, but it'll be in someone's cupboard in their basement or something and you have no idea where. Also, some quest givers will give you a quest and are only there for very specific times (that you don't know about), so you'll be waiting around for them to come back when you want to complete it.

Annoying things like that, really. I was alt-tabbing to gamebanshee constantly. Witcher 2 is much less irritating in that respect. I'm not the kind of person who wants a "bread crumb trail" to everything, but seriously...

 curran12 wrote:
it had a lot of times where it felt more like a 14 year old's "mature" fanficiton, stuffed with sex for no reason other than sex (and you get a sexy trading card for sex!).

Haha, yeah. Gotta catch 'em all! (STIs, that is.)

 Spyder68 wrote:
I know you said no MMO's.

But SWTOR is free to play and worth trying.

The Storyline is fully voice acted, and you can play through 90-95% of the quests solo.


You can play it pretty much like a single player game if you wanted.

SWTOR does have a good story, but it is padded out by hours and hours of boring MMO grinding. When I played that game I found I was holding out for the reward of a good conversation at the end of the quest, but it just wasn't worth the time investment imo. Also the companion "affection" is silly. To get access to their conversations the only real way of doing so is to buy gifts for them. And It's not like one or two, more like hundreds. At the start you'll be buying like 40 or so to get them up to 2000 affection, and you'll be standing there for 5 minutes giving them all to them.

 curran12 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I have Portal. It was loads of fun, even if my computer chugged towards the end. It'll be fun to play it again with no slowdowns.


I've heard that should avoid The Witcher, but play The Witcher 2. Why is the first one one to avoid?

I never played the 2nd one, but I hated the first Witcher game. The plot was very meandering, there were lots of times where I had no idea why I was in a place or if it was important or not. Plus, I personally felt the writing quality was shoddy, especially when it came to tone. It was meant to be this grim, oppressive setting where science is very low, yet your character talks in modern terms about science and genetics, it was very jarring. And it had a lot of times where it felt more like a 14 year old's "mature" fanficiton, stuffed with sex for no reason other than sex (and you get a sexy trading card for sex!).

It also didn't help that the combat was absolutely horrendous. I managed to get halfway through the first Witcher before I just got tired of the combat and questing systems.

Thankfully, the sequel manages to fix almost all of the issues of the first. You don't have to play the first one to understand the second one, although it does help with knowing who a few characters are. You could easily read a plot synopsis and be ready for the Witcher 2.

Better yet, next week, a new (pretty much officially approved) mod will be releasing that greatly improves all of the combat and questing in the game.

I grabbed Witcher 2 and put it into my pile, I might give it a try at some point down the line, but I've got a few other games waiting for me in the wings.

Anyway, to put this back on topic, here are some good indie titles for you (alot of these are available through XBLA or PSN, but Steam as well).

Bastion
Dust: An Elyisian Tail
VVVVVV

 curran12 wrote:

Dust: An Elyisian Tail

This is a must play IMO. I mean one guy put so much love and effort into it that it beats some of the AAA games. I really need to start playing it again.

So far I can't see why people don't like the Witcher(yes I'm late to the party) I'm enjoying it so far. Granted the combat is a bit bland, press Z,X,C to change stance and left click when sword goes fiery isn't the best combat system. Its still a pretty nice looking game imo and still intrigued by the story so far.

Also I recommend Batman: Arkham Island/City (don't think I saw em mentioned) open world, RPG-esque gamplay with a very smooth and fun combat system is nothing to sniff at.

Well, the first Witcher is more of an introduction to the world than anything else, so if you like it, it's there and it's enjoyable, and if you don't, then it's not incredibly necessary to enjoy the massively improved sequel.

Hopefully, sometime down the road, we'll get a remake of the first Witcher in the current engine.

Thanks for the info on The Witcher/The Witcher 2. I think I'll stick with the second one.

 johnscott10 wrote:
Also I recommend Batman: Arkham Island/City (don't think I saw em mentioned) open world, RPG-esque gamplay with a very smooth and fun combat system is nothing to sniff at.

Arkham Asylum was the first game I bought and played on my PS3, and Arkham City is a game I love so much I've played it through 4 times. No need to recommend them. I already know how great they are.

If you can find it for cheap and you have a friend to play with, I'll suggest "Hunted: The Demon's Forge".