With so few good new titles being released these days, especially by major studios, I figured I'd make a thread for everyone to share your favourite classic or older games, especially if they're lesser-known titles that others might have missed at the time.
I'll open with The Saboteur (2009), Mercenaries (2005) and Saints Row 2 ( The 2008 original)
I'd argue the golden age was 1994 to 2004.
'94 starts with games like Master of Magic, System Shock, Warcraft's: Orcs and Humans, Eye of the Beholder and Menzoberranzan, Theme Park, X-COM: UFO defense and more. It was an tremendous year for gamers, and that's just where things started for the era.
As a kid nothing has ever given me as harsh of a lesson on percentages and chance than XCOM. 80% really just means 50%
other great games from roughly that era: Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Wizardry 7 and 8, Fallout 1 and 2, Jagged Alliance 2, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, Arx Fatalis, Dungeon Master
I'll just point out how many of those entire genres vanished once Console 'Tards vomited stupid all over games.
Master of Magic is turn based strategy, as was X-COM: UFO Defense
Eye of the Beholder was turn based RPG
Theme Park was an isometric builder
Warcraft Orcs and Humans was RTS
All gone as soon as the X-Box came out. Console 'Tards can't read and they only understand running and gunning. They only have ten buttons or so on their 'Tard 'Trollers. The attention span of a 'Tard is frighteningly short.
After the X-Box was proved to rake in the big bucks through 'Tard Tax, future development of AAA games was for 'Tard Boxes, then ported to PC.
It even happened to FPS games. Unreal Tournament 3 had 100 ms of lag baked directly into the network stack. It had fewer game modes and simpler, smaller maps. It was the worst of the series. It made the most money, because Console 'Tards got to play it for the first time.
Want the perfect case study? Deus Ex: Invisible War. In this sequel maps were reduced to the size of a phone booth. Maps and missions were made simple enough for 'Tards. Stealth was an ineffective afterthought. It made way more money than the original, ground breaking Deus Ex.
Console 'Tards ended the golden age of gaming. Then they fucked your mom.
Yup, the golden era ended around 2004 as the Xbox/console purveyors found points of cross-over with the PC market. There was pushback and "naysayers" (who were absolutely fucking right of course), but console 'tards are the reason gaming got so stupid. One-hundred million percent. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
Same thing with anything really. Happened with the internet in general. Mass market appeal = Drooling morons pour in.
ill absolutely concede that.. i just pulled some years out my ass but yeah i enjoyed a good many games prior to win98... of course im probably a bit younger than you so they were more a long the lines of Hercules and Casper interactive adventure
Harpoon 2 came out in 1994.
The current, modded version of Harpoon 2 is still the best naval fleet simulator of all time.
It is realistic enough to use for command training, and still lots of fun.