After several *years*, finally purchased a couple of commercial games

[poppadrake]

I found Morrowind's combat system quite okay. Not too complicated, but easy to get in. Of course you'll miss a lot at the beginning...you can't expect a beginner to swing it properly. Besides, you can pay trainers to get some skill with any weapon you want...

Anyway I more value Morrowind's open world and freedom, you can spend days exploring without having to touch main quest...

Morrowind was lots of fun!  I was really getting into it when my HP crashed for the umpteenth time and I got an iMac.
The Elders scrolls is a great series for scope of gameplay more than just hack-and-slash

[freezerburn]

Beyond Good and Evil.  Made by Ubisoft, it's a *great* single-player platformer/adventure game.

[Legendman3]

You should deffintaly get steam then buy Half life and Half life 2 its episodes portal TF2 and then you have the greatest games ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But thats my opinion because these and halo have jump started the fps industry

[Hertzila]

You should deffintaly get steam then buy Half life and Half life 2 its episodes portal TF2 and then you have the greatest games ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But thats my opinion because these and halo have jump started the fps industry

Not to derail the topic completely but I seriously hope by "jump started" you mean "jump restarted". Even if I think VALVe is the top FPS game developer today, they didn't really even restart it, just made a couple of the best gems of FPS genre. Halo might have restarted, if not actually started, the console FPS games but most of the resulting games are rather... crappy.

On topic: Are you familiar with the Deus Ex series, Destructavator? If not, I heavily recommend playing the first one, despite its age. The second (DX: Invisible War) was (a lot) worse than the first but not that bad of game nonetheless.

[Legendman3]

Um thats reply was my OPNION whatever is in it is what i think so buzz off my posts oh and i only heard of those series i still have the dooms and other old timing fps theyre good for replaying duke nukem makes me laugh 

[Specialist290]

Funny Deus Ex should be mentioned around here--I've been watching a Let's Play of the game on YouTube, and I'm half-tempted to buy it when I can muster up the cash.  Does it run on Vista / Windows 7?

[Legendman3]

Ill give you a hint anygame made for windows 95 or atleast before windows 98 came out wont work for windows 7 games made for windows 98 and up work on it go look up when it was realesed and think if it will work because i dont want to look it up

[DiDiT]

Ill give you a hint anygame made for windows 95 or atleast before windows 98 came out wont work for windows 7 games made for windows 98 and up work on it go look up when it was realesed and think if it will work because i dont want to look it up

UNLESS you PATCH it or use windows built in COMPATIBILITY system. 

[Hertzila]

Funny Deus Ex should be mentioned around here--I've been watching a Let's Play of the game on YouTube, and I'm half-tempted to buy it when I can muster up the cash.  Does it run on Vista / Windows 7?

Nigh-perfectly with the latest official patch. Only problem I've encountered has been buggy sounds (as in, they rattle frequently when sound gets to loud) and it seems that it happens only because I use a multicore processor. Switching the affinity manually to only one core or using RunFirst has pretty much fixed it. Also remember to install the older DirectX versions manually, for some reason MS doesn't pack them with modern Windows systems.


Also, if you do get it, I highly recommend installing Shifter mod. While not essential, it fixes a few small (non-critical) bugs and IMO tunes the overall gameplay more enjoyable (not that it isn't enjoyable without it).

[Destructavator]

Actually I bought a CD of Deus Ex when the first release version came out, right after getting hooked on the demo, and enjoyed it very much - one of my favorite games of all time.

Never tried the second, simply because I heard it was shit.

I did hear they're working on a third that supposedly is all-new and improved.

I also tried many of the MODs for Deus Ex - one recent one that *finally* got released is "The Nameless MOD" which is HUGE (over a gigabyte total IIRC) and has nearly half the game functions and code re-written.

[Jeep-Eep]

Half-life and most things Source. And Overlord! I'll play anything. Play X-com or UQM for a while, then go over to my new muscle machine and play some Stalker.

[ORCUS]

I'm in the same situation than you buddy!

looks like there's more FPS / 3rd person shooters out there nowadays...

[Hertzila]

looks like there's more FPS / 3rd person shooters out there nowadays...

As in, the two mixed together or simply that shooters seem to be overpowering other genres?

If former, I don't think there are many, apart from R6 Vegas and upcoming Deus Ex 3 (or DX: Human Revolution as it's officially).

If latter, [rant]I agree, there doesn't seem to be as much variety as there were in the Good Ol' Days™. I haven't seen a great turn-based strategy/tactic game developed for a long time (apart from SOTS [which is also a grand space 4X] and open-source projects like this) and the good old RTS is also taking damage (late C&C series); grand strategies (Paradox Interactive) are getting a bit more attention but the scope makes them a little hard to play as quickgames. Simulators seem to get either worse directly or by bad corporate choices (Silent Hunter) or completely disappear (flight sims, expecially modern combat ones).[/rant]
If you do know a good game to one(/some) of these, well, at least I haven't heard of any. Every even slightly more niche-like genre seems to be getting sidelined by the bigger companies in the neverending quest for the mystic Mass Appeal! Which is sad since in the long run it will have the horrible effect of making every game samey, if not practically the same game over and over again.

[Ildamos]

There's always the free Tribes 2 (my review of the game), which is being hosted by the tribesnext.com (the official site) guys.

Heard a lot of people saying that the Tribes series began and ended with the first one but if you want gameplay that's not run-of-the-mill, try the first sequel. It doesn't cost a thing and while it may not be Starsiege: Tribes, it still is a Tribes game.

What caused the downfall of this franchise? Its developers didn't follow the

neverending quest for the mystic Mass Appeal!

Well Tribes 3 did, after a fashion, but the first two games were more oriented towards people who liked class-based MP play and gameplay that had a steeper learning curve than the usual FPS.