Okay, so my first game is Deus Ex. An unmistakable classic that is often held among the highest pantheon of PC games, this revolutionary FPS/RPG hybrid brings the fun in a big way. With large open game worlds, players may approach almost any situation from a variety of angles. Whether you're a stealth player, a run-'n-gunner, or anywhere in between, Deus Ex will satisfy your urge for human-on-human, human-on-robot, and human-on-chicken-dinosaur-thing gratuity. Not to mention that the game's three distinct endings give you more than enough reason to purge yourself into the conspiratorial world of JC Denton once more.
My number two is a true classic that almost all current gamers have at least some familiarity with. While it's not the first FPS,
it is the one that perfect the Wolfenstein 3D formula. Now that gamers have had over a decade to mess with it, Doom is one of the most heavily modded and upgraded games out there. This plethora of exciting new content makes Doom a great game to keep going back to. Not only is the main adventure still fun, but it gets a lot more entertaining (and a lot easier) when you can use modern shooter controls in it's sprite-delight world.
My number three is not a game that is universally praised. As a matter of fact, it's a game that, at the time of its release, received decent reviews, but only tepid initial consumer response. Despite this, Max Payne 2 (and the MP series in general) is a game that I hold with the highest of prestige. To me, this is the perfection of third person control and gameplay. The guns feel properly weighty, with enemies taking few hits (and even less when the Realism Mod is enabled), and the Bullet Time is a saving grace that you'll need to rely on throughout the rather short campaign. Aiming is quick, responsive, and it never feels like a chore when trying to go for a certain body part or object. Almost all TPS' could learn a thing or two from the looser controls that make MP2 so much fun to play. Now, surprisingly, there is actually a large mod community for this game. All sorts of new game modes, campaigns, and whole new experiences exist and are based on the game's engine. I've tried many of these mods, and I must say, you'll have just as much fun as with the original single-player. Overall, Max Payne 2 is a guilty pleasure that I keep coming back to all the time, and is unequivocally one of my favorite games
Grand Theft Auto IV is a game that I waited many months for back in 2007 and 2008. Seeing very little actual gameplay, fans were teased incessantly by the folks at Rockstar. Once it came out, my mind was blown. Real, human characters and an amazingly alive city made this experience a special one. Even now, I still pop in GTA4 every once in a while just to run people over. I will spend an hour simply hitting civilians with my car, because the physics make it so much fun to do so. While some debate the quality of all of it's individual parts, the overall enjoyment and sandbox sillyness of Mr. Bellic's installment cannot be ignored.
Ron Perlman says it best at the beginning of Fallout 2. War really does never change. Neither does the value of a game. Even though it's an old-style open-world RPG, Fallout 2 is still one of the best in the business. Very few modern games can even come close to the freedom you feel with this installment. You can kill anyone (except children), go wherever you want, whenever you want, and can interact with every single person in the game world. With tons of quests and content packed in to this essential PC adventure, you won't get bored quickly. With so much chaos to cause in the post-apocalypse, who has time to think about morality?
