Baldur's Gate and ToTSC, Baldur's Gate II and ToB
Starcraft and Brood War
Warcraft III and TFT
Civilization II and III
Icewind Dale series
Age of Empires II

I believe that this question is greatly dependent on taste.

Have to play:

• Master of Orion I and II. Your average good quality 4X in space.
• STARS!. The best 4X space game.
• SpaceWard Ho!. Another 4X, but this one is so funny that it's worth to try out even if you don't like 4X games. And you can finish a game in about half an hour too!
• Civilization in general. Great games.
• Colonization. Similar to Civilization in style, but the gameplay is really different.
• The original C&C. This was right before the RTS genre went downhill and smashed into a concrete wall. Great game, best of its time and you can't rush your way thru the game, so there actually is a lot of strategy.
• Starcraft. The original. Simply because it became, with time, the most well balanced RTS in existence. And it was the best of its kind when it got out too, with an incredibly good single player mode. You can't say that about the vast majority of the "modern" multiplayer games.
• Diablo I and II. Talking about multiplayer games with great single player experience, you can't go wrong with Diablo. Yes, it is repetitive... Yes, it's potentially mindless gameplay... Yes, you can't get very good at it without investing a massive amount of time... But it's FUN!
• Fallout. The best RPG I ever played on a PC. Too bad it's so repetitive though.
• Homeworld series. Some kind of RTS with 3 dimensions to play with. Very buggy and somewhat unbalanced (Sierra), but very interesting.
• Outpost II. A quite old RTS. The game part is interesting but slightly repetitive... But what really make this game shine is the integrated novel which you can read between each missions.
• The Settlers I and II. Do I need to say more?
• Knights and Merchants. An obscure game, it is a mix between The Settlers and a RTS. Very slow paced, but that's also why it is so interesting!
• WoW. I hate MMORPGs, and even me can't dodge this one.
• Ultima Online. Same as previous entry but way older.
• Xcom series (UFO: Ennemy Unknown, Xcom: Terror from the Deep and Xcom: Apocalypse). What do I need to say about those?
• Savage series. While failing to deliver, this game concept is incredible. One "Overseer" manage the field a la RTS while the other players play the minions in first person mode, able to both fight and build. Brilliant!
• Donjon Keeper. Play the evil side for a change, and look over the construction of a dungeon able to breed a lot of different kind of monsters which you send fighting the good guys. Hehehe.
• While we are at it, any game made by BullFrog. I can name out of my head Syndicate and Theme Hospital for examples.

Have to avoid like the plague or be very wary of:

• Any game made by Sierra. I swear, I have never played a Sierra game which don't randomly crash around at least once while I play. Don't ask me why, I simply don't know. Even if there is (few) non-adventure games made by Sierra that I do like a lot... Sierra still remains associated to failure and bad coding for me.
• Most modern RPS. Especially those which are or were very popular, like Half-life or Quake. In resume, any mindless FPS which are played only for the graphics or the kick of handling incredibly mind boggling guns which don't make sense whatsoever.
• Most remakes based on another engine. Like, for example, Colonization IV based on the Civilization IV engine. This is not Colonization, it's a mod for Civilization... Not the same thing at all.
• Master of Orion III. Nobody can explain what went thru the heads of the developer of this star series... It's one of the worse game I ever played, period... If we can even call that a game.
• SuperPower. Pretty much the same as last entry. This is not a game, it's a boring simulation in which nothing interesting ever happens!
• Commercial remakes of old gems, especially Xcom and games branded with the C&C franchise. If it's noting like the old games, why pretend it will be its successor? Why?

I could probably make a 2 or 3 pages long post if I continue like that... But I think I got the most important games already. :)

I never had such problems with a Sierra game. Depends on the game like anything else. I remember Phantasmagoria and Quest for Glory IV were buggy. Quest for Glory IV is still definitely worth playing as well as plenty of other Sierra games, especially if you're a fan of adventure games. Conquests of Camelot, King's Quest 3-6, any Space Quest, Beast Within, any Quest for Glory, Betrayal at Krondor, all of those games and more are worth playing. A lot of people complain about dying, but I like dying in games.

Looking at my shelf of games, I"ll throw in The Last Express. It's a unique mystery game that a lot of people overlook. A lot of people say Diablo, but personally I think it's overrated. It's decent with a friend but boring as hell alone or with strangers. I've never liked dungeon crawls with little character interaction or city exploration. That's why I always say Baldur's Gate is a million times better than Diablo.

Wow every game I could think of has been listed. :(

But anyway here is my list,

Baldur’s Gate : Awesome RPG.
Deus Ex : Awesome FPS/RPG
Morrowind : One of the best free roaming RPGs I have ever played.
Sierras Quest Games, mainly the older ones : Adventure gaming at its hardest and the older games are much less likely to have game breaking bugs.
Doom : FPS horror FTW.
Duke Nukem 3d : Much better then Halo, Half-life and any other FPS out there at the moment.
Fallout 1/2/3 Awesome Post Apocalyptic RPGs.
Monkey Island Series Adventure gaming at its funniest, Guybrush FTW.

And that’s about all I can think of at the moment. There are tons more that I love and would recommend but these are the games that make you love or hate the genre.Oh and I can't stand Halo or Half-life, they bring nothing new to their genre but get hailed as the best games ever. To me you have to revolutionise your genre to get that title, not just do the same as ever other game before.

anyone interested in starcraft 1 on 1 :D??

You can't be serious with this. First, let's dispel the myth that revolutionary is the one and only condition of something to be good. You don't mean to be revolutionary to be good. In fact, a lot of revolutionary concepts are poorly implemented the first time they see the light, and its only after hard work by later creators that those concepts gets refined to the awesomeness those concepts are hailed for. Everyone respects the first to introduce the concept, but most of the time it is recognized that that concept achieves all its potential later, when creators get more and more comfortable with the concepts.

That being said, I think that half-life is a great game by virtue of its level design, that is one of the best I've seen in an FPS, it's polished gameplay and some of it's great enemy design. For example, this game levels never get old for my, a problem I find in a lot of FPS. Not only they are exciting and interesting, but they also change the environment enough so as to fell like ever changing, saving me the boredom of having the same level design through all the game, as it happens with a lot of FPS.

And I don't need to talk about the story. I mean, it's the first FPS that had a cohesive story progressing throughout the game ALL IN CHARACTER, without cutscenes nor any other trick like that. I mean, it's the most immersive FPS I played.

I think that half-life is a great game, for that and a lot more reasons. It's the game that made me love the FPS genre (before that, I didn't really cared for it) and turned it into a more fun genre that just killing an endless stream of enemies, like most doom clones of the time. A game doesn't need to be revolutionary to be a great game, and half-life is just all the FPS genre ideas distilled into its most perfect form and brilliantly executed.

I say! :p

El Quia Half-Life was a good game, but the hype is what turned me off.Its not the best FPS ever. I much prefer Duke Nukem 3D, it brings more to the table, at least more that I want from my FPS. Smart arse hero and enemies I enjoy killing. But you are welcome to your opnion, its what makes discussing games great, if we all thought the same there wouldn't be much to say. :thumbs:

Yes, and they certainly completely screwed up the gameplay in the whole HL2 series.

I'll be damned, whilst Crysis really to avoid, on the other hand Crysis:Warhead is a pretty good SP game, finished Warhead now and I'll think I'll gonna replay it, it's amazing how different the gameplay (in SP) is, Warhead is much more as the 'old style' games, lots to do, plenty of action, some really good maps etcetera .....

:mhh:
Too bad they still had to create some 'railshooter' levels, you sit there like an idiot whilst wave after wave of enemies comes towards you, ah well, can't have it all.

List of everything worth playing on PC is just toooo long. :hypno: