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Tired of watching movies? Sick of binging series? Want to do something a little more active?

Try some old gold games, games that may be oldies but are still goodies to pas the time waiting for science to defeat the corona virus, or at least give you some armor against it.

All these are PC versions as that's all I ever play and should run on damn near any modern recent desktop now.

1. Hostile waters, Antaeus rising: An interesting game that blends 3rd person perspective shooters and RTS action, this features the voices of Tom Baker and the late Paul Darrow (RIP Avon). It's an odd game with some interesting twists. First off it's not a post apocalypse game, the setting is one where the human race finally achieved a virtual paradise on earth, now they have to fight from the people who want to ruin it.

The plot and story are good, great voice acting, interesting mix of commanding units thru an easy to use system and either fighting or working yourself. The graphics are heavily dated but well designed and very colorful, with day and night cycles. This game was the first one I ever heard the F word in and it surprised me. Cheap and available on steam.

2. Battlezone PC. Another in the limited genre blending FPS and RTS games, Battlezone features an interesting alternate history that sees a secret cold war waged thru the solar system between american and russian forces in the 70's. The plot alone is fun, the graphics are an interesting mic of old bu colorful ones and NASA images used for the moon and mars terrain maps. Got a joystick with a hat? Even better.


3. Return to castle wolfenstein. Forget the recent wolfenstein entries with all the doom and gloom nazis won ww2 alternate history, (And probably forget the last one period) let's go back to the secret battles of WW2 where all american boy B.J. Blazkowitz is killing evil nazis and stopping them from winning the way thru using paranormal forces of ancient history. A great FPS with some very well done puzzles (Look over doors leading into rooms to see if there are symbols above them) and kill nazis. Loads of nazis. With flamethrowers in some cases. Absolutely awesome graphics in it's day that have aged fairly well. Hitler doesn't show up in this one but his number one boy Himmler makes a cameo and the graphics are good enough to recognize him if you know your history.

4. Tron 2.0. A better story overall that the movie sequel, with much more of the original movie in it and less daft punk music video. Tron 2.0 breaks the mold by not trying to simulate reality and creating an environment that could only exist in a computer game. Mush like the original tron movie but brighter and more colorful. It's a change of pace from most real environment games and I kinda liked it. The colors, the colors....

Forget covid, don't worry if your pc needs an upgrade to handle them just download some great old games and go dakka dakka your way down memory lane for a while with these or other great old ones games.

I'll second Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising - and it's worth mentioning that the story-line was written by Warren Ellis.

I really like Masters of Orion and Masters of Magic. The very old ones.....

I still play on an emulator from time to time.

Moved to the proper forum.

War Inc. A little known DOS-era game about running a private military corporation, which was more complex than most RTS games today, including designing your own units, a stock market, a strategic map, and so on.

My old go to’s are:

7 Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries - a late 90’s RTS with small elements of population morale, taxation and food management.

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms - another late 90’s RTS

Rollercoaster Tycoon - needs no introduction

Theme Hospital - needs no intro either

Z - another RTS set on a small map where rushing your troops to capture the factories is key.

 Easy E wrote:
I really like Masters of Orion and Masters of Magic. The very old ones.....

I still play on an emulator from time to time.

Slytherine released a DLC for Masters of Magic on their store. It's basically some mods and community patch which was worked on by someone and they've polished it up and brought them in so that it can be released as official dlc. for the game.

https://www.slitherine.com/game/master-of-magic-caster-of-magic
Of course far as I know you need to buy their version of the core game to use the expansion with.

Games that come to mind in this category to me are:

Descent (1994): This one's an oldie but a goodie for sure. To me, it's a FPS with a twist, in that it's 6 degrees of freedom instead of 3 since you're in a spaceship instead of on the ground. The graphics are seriously dated these days, but the game is cheap on Steam and runs from DOSbox pretty well.

Total Annihilation (1997): A contemporary RTS to the original StarCraft. Much greater variety of units, but the story is nowhere near as good and the units are not as balanced. Still worth playing IMO.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999): Civilization, but in SPACE! Probably my favorite of all the Civ games, although I'm not sure where to obtain a copy these days (maybe GoG has it?).

Another series of old games I wish I could find and play would be Marathon. The predecessors of the Halo games. I remember playing a couple of free demos of them back when I was really too young to know what I was doing.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Games that come to mind in this category to me are:

Descent (1994): This one's an oldie but a goodie for sure. To me, it's a FPS with a twist, in that it's 6 degrees of freedom instead of 3 since you're in a spaceship instead of on the ground. The graphics are seriously dated these days, but the game is cheap on Steam and runs from DOSbox pretty well.

Total Annihilation (1997): A contemporary RTS to the original StarCraft. Much greater variety of units, but the story is nowhere near as good and the units are not as balanced. Still worth playing IMO.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999): Civilization, but in SPACE! Probably my favorite of all the Civ games, although I'm not sure where to obtain a copy these days (maybe GoG has it?).

Another series of old games I wish I could find and play would be Marathon. The predecessors of the Halo games. I remember playing a couple of free demos of them back when I was really too young to know what I was doing.

If you like original starcraft I honestly can't see you not liking original "Dark Reign", a game an awful lot like starcraft, not as much unit personality and story but some great options like setting unit behavior and damage tolerance for each unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Games that come to mind in this category to me are:

Descent (1994): This one's an oldie but a goodie for sure. To me, it's a FPS with a twist, in that it's 6 degrees of freedom instead of 3 since you're in a spaceship instead of on the ground. The graphics are seriously dated these days, but the game is cheap on Steam and runs from DOSbox pretty well.

Total Annihilation (1997): A contemporary RTS to the original StarCraft. Much greater variety of units, but the story is nowhere near as good and the units are not as balanced. Still worth playing IMO.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999): Civilization, but in SPACE! Probably my favorite of all the Civ games, although I'm not sure where to obtain a copy these days (maybe GoG has it?).



Another series of old games I wish I could find and play would be Marathon. The predecessors of the Halo games. I remember playing a couple of free demos of them back when I was really too young to know what I was doing.

I got descent 2 from steam, a great game even today.

SOOO many good old games!

1) Dark Reign 1 and 2 - though 2 is more modern in style. I recall when DR2 was a top release with phenomenal graphics in its day for an RTS game. Being able to zoom in and see tattoos on character faces; using the game engine for in-game cinematic events.
However where both games really shine is the user interface for unit control. In almost all other RTS games you have your standard stop, hold ground, attack move, move. Some also add "auto scout". And that's about it.
In Dark Reign games you could do whatever you wanted. With a really easy to use small behaviour menu you could make units that auto explored and ran away from combat (scouts); auto explore and hunt enemies; defend areas; attack areas etc... It was a very smooth and simple system to use that gave you total freedom. Plus it was universal so even your top level tank could act like a scout - whereas in many other RTS games "scout commands" are often restricted just to the scout unit.

2) Homeworld. Whilst its aged (the remaster does a decent job though of updating visuals even if it has some issues with formations because it was built on the 2nd game engine rather than the 1st game engine); it remains one of the best story telling experiences within a game. The cinematics and musical score reinforce it. It's a powerful story and it holds no punches. In its day it was also one of the first big 3D games so back in the day the intro was really amazing to see for the first time. Gameplay is also very solid, though I'd wager more modern gamers would prefer the sequel Homeworld 2 which is a little bit easier and smoother - though the sequel sadly sort of mucked up the story a bit.

3) Sacrifice. This is a quirky game that's vanished into obscurity (still up on GOG though). It's a really fancy game with a quirky take on fantasy settings. You play as a mage in 3rd person and you have a small army that you command near you. You basically have to fight across maps to secure souls and mana which you use to summon monsters and spells in a quest to destroy the enemy alter and banish their mage from the land. Modern gamers might even think its a bit like a single player moba in structure - though instead of mindless mobs, they follow your commands. You can keep your army with you or even send portions off to fight over the map (trickier with the controls, but very doable). You can also leave them bound to mana fountains to defend them.

Terrain was also modifiable in game. A volcano spell would rise up a huge portion before erupting; a boring spell would eat the terrain out from under you. Meanwhile get caught in a tornado and you get flung around in the air.


4) Total Annihilation. A really great musical score backs up a game of robot destruction. What I really love in this game is that when units died they don't vanish. Instead they either blow up entirely or they become wreckage. This creates some interesting tactical elements because now instead of using loads of weak units to push through defences en-mass; you have to be cautious. You can plug the enemy gaps in their defences with your own dead units if you're not careful. It adds a new layer to things and whilst some of the Supreme commander games have included corpses to harvest; TA is still the only one that really blocked your progression with your own dead.

TA Kingdoms got a mention up above which is a darker gothic style fantasy game and the only one where you can fill the whole screen with flying firebreathing dragons! AI could be a bit of a total derp (it mostly just builds stuff without any real tactics); but its a really fun game. The campaign was also very unique in that instead of playing one faction per campaign; you instead have a single campaign that shifts control faction to faction as you play out the story. There's even some missions where you'll build a base in one mission then in the next there's a short time jump and you're attacking it (pre-made bases though so you can't game the game by building bad to start with).

5) Stronghold and Stronghold Crusaders - the first two games which remain the best they've ever made. Crusaders lost some of the green setting of the English Countryside; but it added in skirmishing modes which were missing from the first game which is pure campaign. Build a castle, harvest resources, build an army - fight!
It's a huge shame that the parent company, whilst continuing to release games, has never matched these two games since. Heck Stronghold 2 had some really daft ideas as they expanded the building roster by nearly double; but at the same time made the buildable area for your castle in most skirmish maps TINY. You honestly can't actually build a castle on most of the maps and even where you can its often very cramped with little space to vary your build. The insane building roster also makes it very hard in terms of appeasing the people because its trying to be too much a castle building sim whilst also an RTS game. I still hold out hope that they might recover, but I just the feeling that whatever made their first two games so fantastic is just missing from their company now.

6) Starcraft and Diablo 2 - do I have to mention details on why these two games are genre defining titles that even to this day remain really fantastically fun and top choices. Whilst Diablo 2 has aged a bit worse and hasn't had an HD remaster (as yet); both games are still fantastic fun. Starcraft with its solid RTS formula; Diablo 2 with its random maps and dungeons and loads of great loot and fun characters to play. Be a Druid who transforms into a werebear and summons wolves to his side; be an assassin who cobra-strikes to victory (well at least till they finally nerfed it a bit ); a necromacer who calls the dead; a barbarian. A neat thing is that back then with D2 the characters were set designs and genders. This means that they each look totally unique and their equipment is totally unique as well. Whilst more modern games like Titan Quest and Grim Dawn (fantastic game) have opened up with more free form character building and choices; the gear and character style all tend to be rather samey in a sense. Because its all fitting on the same core design - your barbarian isn't twice the size of the others; your necromancer isn't pasty skinned etc... It's something I do miss even if more modern games in theory give you more character creation "choice" I find the visual side actually results in less visual diversity.

7)

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999): Civilization, but in SPACE! Probably my favorite of all the Civ games, although I'm not sure where to obtain a copy these days (maybe GoG has it?).

Thanks for reminding about this! It is on GoG, and there goes my weekend...

1) Has... has nobody mentioned Doom 2 yet? The base game itself is only scratching the surface. The real meat and potatoes comes from the fethton of WADs available online. I’ve already got a few hundred map packs installed on a flash drive. File size (for the base game and WADs) is often a few MBs tops, and you can practically run this thing on a calculator.

2) Eador Genesis - It’s 2009, but that is kind of 11 years ago. It’s like a mix of Civilization and Might and Magic, with a lot of things to do. Surprisingly quite difficult as well.

3) Unreal Tournament - I’d recommend 2004 personally, but I hear some people prefer the older UT. Arena shooter with a lot of control over your character and a sizeable modding community. Try looking for UT Chaos if you get bored of the base game.

beast_gts wrote:

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999): Civilization, but in SPACE! Probably my favorite of all the Civ games, although I'm not sure where to obtain a copy these days (maybe GoG has it?).

Thanks for reminding about this! It is on GoG, and there goes my weekend...

Yep! Comes with the expansion too (though I’ve heard it’s a bit unbalanced). I don’t think I’ve ever had such a passive-aggressive relationship with the AI quite like this before.

I'm going to put in a good word for Ultima 4,5 and 6. They were open world rpgs a decade or more before the term became a thing, and to me they're all still a lot of fun to play. The commands take a bit of getting used to, and they're the sort of game where it helps to have something on hand to take notes with, but I love them.

 SkavenLord wrote:
1) Has... has nobody mentioned Doom 2 yet? The base game itself is only scratching the surface. The real meat and potatoes comes from the fethton of WADs available online. I’ve already got a few hundred map packs installed on a flash drive. File size (for the base game and WADs) is often a few MBs tops, and you can practically run this thing on a calculator.

You can run Doom on a *printer*

https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/12-things-that-prove-that-doom-will-run-on-literally-anything/

If you want to laugh, try an old game called "Armed and dangerous" which is a british comedy themed game that is very suggestive of "monty python".

It's a full blooded shooter game, but has lots of comedy elements in it. You have a lot of missions and objectives to do to keep it from getting boring and all in all it's a pretty good game that will keep you laughing.

Armed and Dangerous was by the same team who made Giants Citizen Kabuto - which is another very british humour very funny and entertaining game well worth a look

Still own a N64, some titles still hold up decently okay.
Super mario for exemple.

Cryo Interactive made some games that were triumphs of their time and they still hold up today. Captain Blood, DUNE and Lost Eden feel very natural, although Captain Blood was a bit too cryptic if you didn't read the instruction booklet.

Back in the mid 90s I spent the summer playing DUNE and made that game very real. The bit where you get off with Chani is damn hilarious though as you've literally just met and Stilgar just jumps in there with "nowyou've met Chani we can do other amazing stuff in this game!".

Another great oldie was Cyberstorm 2: Corporate Wars, which is an amazing turn-based strategy game.

They're releasing an updated version of the original Crysis soon.

Syndicate? No love for Syndicate? I loved that game and I never even owned it, just played it on my best mates computers for most of my teenage years!

 Jihadnik wrote:
Syndicate? No love for Syndicate? I loved that game and I never even owned it, just played it on my best mates computers for most of my teenage years!

Syndicate was awesome. Absolutely loved it. No so keen on the sequel though, struggled with that.

Just got Shadow of the Horned Rat, loved that game as a younger person but for some reason I am finding it a lot harder now than then.
My favourite (and go to) old game though is Colonisations, every year I fire it up for a week or two and zone out, such fun.

 ingtaer wrote:
Just got Shadow of the Horned Rat, loved that game as a younger person but for some reason I am finding it a lot harder now than then.
My favourite (and go to) old game though is Colonisations, every year I fire it up for a week or two and zone out, such fun.

A lot of older games are harder than modern ones. They are made to be a challenge to overcome whilst a lot of modern game design (esp in campaigns and story campaigns) are made to be achieved and progressed through. Which is why when something like Dark Souls appeared it became a bit of a legacy of its own for being hard to win and not die all the time. It's basically harkening back to older game formulas where saving and reloading or restarting from auto respawn points was more expected.

Aye, but why is current me finding it so much harder than past me did? I am not into scum saving and tend to just play on when I make a booboo so that is not an issue, just seems tougher.

Probably because you're out of practice. Also a lot of the eariler RTS games had much larger AI armies and power to compensate for very weak AI in general.

Been having a great time with dungeon keeper lately. Good old classic though a lot of it has aged quite poorly. I absolutely love the feeling of it though.

 Nerak wrote:
Been having a great time with dungeon keeper lately. Good old classic though a lot of it has aged quite poorly. I absolutely love the feeling of it though.

Dungeon Keeper is great. I think I enjoyed the second one even more. Had more personality to it.

There's a modern remake of it called War For The Overworld that's well worth a look. Even has Richard Ridings as the narrator still. Fun fact by the way - he does the voice for Peppa Pig's Dad...

 Overread wrote:
Which is why when something like Dark Souls appeared it became a bit of a legacy of its own for being hard to win and not die all the time.

Unlike a lot of older games, Dark Souls has honest difficulty, where most older games had fake difficulty from bad game design. There's a HUGE amount of older games that are hard just because their controls are absolute garbage, for example.

Don't put on the nostalgia goggles.

Darksouls uses a lot of gotcha moments - eg crossing the bridge with the dragon the first time its very likely it will fly over and blaze you and kill you without warning. DS is full of traps like that as well as generally tough and higher HP/Damage bosses and suchlike.

It's just as artificial as old games where, such as in RTS, the AI would often attack with pre-set waves that were often bigger than you could produce easily on your own without perfectly playing the opening of the game.


Modern and old games use all the same tricks because game AI is still not true AI in any sense of the word.


As for fake from the controls that's iffy - some newer games might have fancier interfaces but they aren't always superior to the old style. Of course if you go way back some games do have odd controls - the early Tomb Raiders had very rough movement controls even though other games of it era could achieve smoother movement.