Video games

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This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.
People playing a large scale version of the iconic Pong video game at the National Videogame Museum

The successors of electromechanical arcades, born from 2 bored engineers playing ping pong with an oscillator in a radar station, video games are games played with an electronic device capable of projection, instead of paper, pens, dice, boards, anything traditional, and most of the time omitting your imagination too. It is also true that they do contain amusing game mechanics, can be easily played alone, provide visual and auditory representation, and don't cost hundreds of dollars for a few miniature visual representations; however, this does come at the cost of freedom, physical being, social skills, and imagination.

Many traditional or tabletop games (like WH40K and D&D) can now be played as using electronic devices to substitute for their tactile components like maps or minis, proving once again that technology continues to screw up everything that we all wished had remained as it was. A virtual tabletop simulator has been released so you may play a tabletop game with friends out of town. Also, we have an article at List of Vidya Board Games to cover various tabletop adaptions into the digital realm.

Electronic games played by strange, electronic fa/tg/uys have been accepted by /tg/, so that any game can be traditional, and this media fits right in with the old board games and Tabletop Wargames we all know and love. Some video games are accepted and enjoyed by /tg/. Many, however, are not. Generally, video game threads, especially games with no corresponding /tg/ version/interest, belong on /v/ instead.

You'll find quite a few /v/ related articles on 1d4chan because some video games have at least some relation to /tg/ and because 1d4chan tends to draw in people who are fans of WH40K universe primarily through Dawn of War, even if these people don't actually play the tabletop game. And lets be honest here, 1d4chan is as much a page for WH40K fans as it is for fa/tg/uys so these people are certainly welcome here.

Strategy Games[edit]

  • Simulation/Sandbox
    • Armored Core - FromSoftware's mecha series, made with the help of the mastermind behind Macross/Robotech, Shoji Kawamori. The long awaited VI is OUT NOW, and it's one of the greatest.
    • Aurora 4X, a.k.a Dwarf Fortress in space with MUCH more complicated details. It simulates whole galaxies and planetary atmospheres, among other things.
    • Black & White (1 & 2) - Classic god games in which you play as a nameless god trying to achieve supremacy over the world of Eden. A great combination of settlement management, magic casting and pet care (said pet being a giant furry demigod with surprisingly deep AI for the time). The sequel adds full-on city management and RTS warfare ON TOP of the aforementioned elements.
    • Caesar Series (I,II,III,IV) - SimCity but in Roman empire with an extreme emphasis on delivery and logistics. Build your Roman province but handle every aspect of infrastructure, then start crying and delete it. Despite retarded delivery person AI it became a crazy cult classic, and a mod, AUGUSTUS, is made to compensate with roadblocks and monuments from the later games. So cult that Ancient Egypt (Pharaoh), Ancient Greece (Zeus/Poseidon), and eventually Ancient China (Emperor) Spinoffs were made by the same company, Impressions Games. It's so addictive that even a Sumerian spinoff inspired by them was made recently: Nebuchadnezzar. Pharaoh got a remake recently, had a rough launch but it's improving.
    • Dwarf Fortress - The legend, the lamentation, the... fun.
      • Amazing Cultivation Simulator, Wuxia Dwarf Fortress, with crazy cults.
      • Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress IN SPEHSS except dumbed down for the casuals, which may or may not be a good thing. Allows levels of cruelty and Grimdark unmatched even by its parent, however. Four expansions (so far) and lots of mods of all sorts.
    • Factorio, a process building game. The player is stuck on an alien world and trying to build a spaceship to get off said world, but the enormous industrial activity necessary to build a spaceship provokes the local wildlife to attack, necessitating more industry to fight them off. Considered the Forge World (Not that one) simulator by many fa/tg/uys. Beware: The game becomes more addictive than opium very quickly.
      • Dyson Sphere Program: Factorio's fully 3D, multi-planet galactic version on meth made by a Chinese company (of 4 kids). It's crazy as it sounds. Remove combat (scratch that we have Combat now!), add multiple planets and literal Dyson swarm and/or Dyson Sphere building over the ages.
      • Satisfactory, the other 3D Factorio. Exploit an alien planet for your corporate overlords, polluting and irradiating it as you go.
    • From The Depths, in-depth vehicle builder and combat sim. Set in a world called Neter. It's quite focused in naval combat, but it's been expanded over the years to include the other types, with ground vehicles being the newest.
    • Frostpunk: A grimdark city building survival game where you have to protect and maintain a city that is dependent on a massive steam engine to survive.
      • IXION: Frostpunk but in space, and perhaps even more grimdark. At least Earth is still (barely) inhabitable in that one. Your ship is controlled by a woman-turned-Servitor, and what should've been a glorious achievement for mankind blew up the Moon and has left the Earth so dead your people develop Dead Earth Syndrome (sheer absolute despair over the loss of the homeworld and fears of never finding a replacement). Oh, and your ship, the Tiqqun, gets more messed up as the story continues, as just using the FTL deals IRREPARABLE structural damage.
    • Kenshi: You start a nobody in a broken post-apocalyptic world, full of ruins, oppressive kingdoms, savage wildlife, deadly weather and ancient hostile machines. However, you don't have to stay a nobody, and you and your faction can grow so strong and rich they can eclipse everyone else. The path to get there, though, will be immensely painful. Beware the Beak Things!
    • Kerbal Space Program 1 A aerospace engineer is you, build space vehicles, manage your own space agency and conduct missions kerbaled and automated across a simulated solar system. Bear in mind, this game involves actual rocket science; you're going to have to learn about things like Delta-V and slingshot manoeuvres if you're going to plot a course that won't end with your rocket crashing into the ocean and if you try to build your favourite sci-fi ship you'll crash, no exceptions. Sequel's a mess that crashed and burned. Damn you, 2K.
    • Minecraft, for some odd reason.
    • Mount and Blade, it's expandalone Warband, and the new Bannerlord 2. A sandbox medieval setting, you go around either being a bandit or uniting the scattered kingdoms into a grand empire or whatever in a 1st or third person RPG/Action hybrid with heavy emphasis on mounted medieval combat. Enormous modding community means finding something thematically different if you want, including Warhammer and historical mods. In fact, the mods are a selling point of the whole thing, given there is one for just about any setting you can think about.
    • Space Station 13: Dwarf Fortress except you play as the dwarves. Has been completely fucking ruined by goons leaking into every other version of the game.
      • Barotrauma, Space Station 13 but in an ocean world, contrasting Subnautica by being grimdark as hell. Abominations of the Europan deep scare even non-thalassophobics in this one.
    • Subnautica, Minecraft but in an ocean world and lots of wondrous aquatic vistas and water effects. Not for thalassophobics.
    • Tabletop Simulator, a virtual tabletop for playing Card Games, Board Games, RPGs, etc. online with friends. The game has multiple built-in tools for creating custom games, and the Steam Workshop has thousands of add-ons; a popular choice for playing WH40K online thanks to ripped assets from Dawn of War and model scans.
    • VASSAL Engine
    • Valheim, a Viking-themed sandbox game where Odin sends your dead dude to a secret 10th realm where some evil guys are plotting revenge from being sealed off from the regular Nine Realms.
    • X (AKA X Universe), Famous space sim/economy simulator by German developers Egosoft, starting with 1999's X: Beyond the Frontier. With the exception of Rebirth (an unfinished mess brought upon by Deep Silver's meddling, which led to Egosoft self-publishing ever since), all the games are great in their own ways. They tend to be buggy at release though, most notably in the cases of X3 and X4.
  • 4X/Grand Strategy
    • Age of Wonders - Take Master of Magic, then make it good and from the guys who made Overlord no less. The most approved is 2nd game (especially Shadow Magic) as it strikes balance between being its own unique thing, having good campaign and not sacrificing gameplay in the process. That being said AoW1 and AoW3 have their merits with the former being more relaxed and easier to get into while the latter is the most complex out of the bunch, so take your pick.
    • Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Despite starting out as "Civ 2: SPACE EDITION", SMAC became one of the more iconic games of the 90s. In the late 21st century Earth goes to sh*t and a colony ship is dispatched to Alpha Centauri to give humanity a new lease on life. Instead, we start fighting before we even get there and the whole thing eventually spirals off into a free-for all (with aliens joining the fun too!) with transcendence to virtual godhood as the ultimate prize. The game was a great joy to play due to gameplay and strategic depth, an interesting array of futuristic techs mostly rooted in semi-hard science and a plethora of interesting factions and various lore blurbs. Game is so tightly written, people discuss its content to this day. When SJGames released a setting book for GURPS 3e, they didn't have to make up anything at all to get 130 pages of lore.
    • Civilization I-IV - Civilization actually was based on a board game and in a case of coming full circle, ended up creating it's own board game. Civ IV in particular happens to have a highly active modding scene to this very day, and many of those mods are total overhauls with fantasy settings. One of those is a Fall from Heaven mod, or rather a series of mods with shared setting. Neat stuff.
      • Note: Civs V and VI have design issues that make them difficult to recommend in this list, and are thus explicitly not included--that being said, this exclusion is more on the basis of them being Skubish--some people love V and/or VI, while some people hate them. See the civ page for more.
    • Disciples (series) - Heroes of Might and Magic made Grimdark.
    • Distant Worlds (1 & 2) Imagine Master of Orion on LSD/Meth cocktail. Entire Galaxy with every stellar object is colonizable/destructible and the galaxy is full of the aftermath of a massive war.
    • Dominions - Civilization's and Dwarf Fortress' beautiful love child. Enjoy Lovecraft's Father Dagon square up against Ravana from India's Ramayana as they fight for the glory of their respective gods (you and whatever other neckbeards you are playing with).
    • Eador: Genesis - a dream project of former GSC Game World employee, basically it's Heroes of Might and Magic meets Master of Magic with some RPG and God simulator elements. Humongous amounts of content and all kinds of interesting gameplay mechanics, but visually would've looked dated in 1999, nevermind 2009. Also has a faithful but buggy 3D-remake and a sequel that had little to no involvement from the original creator.
    • Endless Space (1 & 2) The first game is OK and free to play, but the second one is where it's at as it does everything the original did better and then some.
    • Endless Legend - The world's freezing solid. Make use of her while you can and find a way out before it's too late.
    • Europa Universalis: Paradox Interactive's wildly successful nation-building simulator based on a 1993 strategy board game, where you control a nation and guide it to become a globally domineering superpower. Ryukyu and Ulm reign supreme.
    • Heroes of Might and Magic - Turn based strategy of over six main games and expansions where you control a fantasy hero and their legion of men/elves/dwarves/creatures/etc. Special mention goes to second and especially third instalments. Fifth was nice too. AVOID the last two like the plague.
    • Lords of Magic - Impressions' take on Might & Magic. Death wants to conquer the world. It's your job to do so instead and kill him.
    • Master of Magic: Take Sid Meier's Civilization. Add fantasy races with their own units, magic in the form of spells and summons, heroes and a very basic isometric battlefield when armies clash, and give dozens of abilities to units according to their species, situation and metal they are armed with (Yes, the metal used can be mithril or adamantite if the building city has any). That's Master of Magic. Still great for when you need to scratch that 'wizard with no sense of right or wrong bent on conquering the world' itch.
    • Master of Orion: Master of Magic's less flexible, more Sci-Fi brother. Several races in space expand and want to control an ancient homeworld guarded by a giant ancient spaceship.
    • Paradox series: This is the go-to company for nation-ruling Grand Strategy games for different eras such as Crusader Kings 800's-1400's, Europa Universalis 1400's-1800's, Victoria 1830's-1936, or Hearts of Iron 1936-1950's.
      • Warhammer: Geheimnisnacht, a Warhammer Fantasy conversion for Crusader Kings II. Setting predates Winds of Chaos & End Times.
    • Sengoku Rance: AliceSoft's Hentai game spinoff that parodies the long-running Nobunaga's Ambition series. You play as Rance, Slaanesh's very own fun guy to be around, as he unifies Warring States-era Japan under his mighty "hyperweapon." Despite the utterly ludicrous premise it's a solid grand strategy game, to the point that the porn is more of a reward for playing well than an end in itself. Comparing this game to Total War was a common troll on /gsg/ when Shogun II was released.
    • Sins of a Solar Empire Proto-Stellaris with all the open-ended random generated universe but with defined factions and a juicy story that is teased but not spelt out for you, partially to give you more freedom. Still looks amazing over 10 years later and has a sequel in the works.
    • Starsector: Basically Mount & Blade in space. An awesome space fleet management game with real-time battle and space exploration. Also a 4X-lite. Set in a chaotic period after the sudden collapse of humanity's golden era under the Domain, most factions now regulate AI even more heavily than before (because 2 wars of apocalyptic scale will do that). The aforementioned factions fight among themselves for resources like drugs and harvested organs without being able to consolidate enough strength to wipe each other out or enough influence to unite much of the sector. Known for having awesome space ship customization, solid space ship battles and a full-blown real-time market simulation. /tg/ mods this to capitalize on 40k prequel potential. Also, space jihad.
    • Stellaris Paradox's attempt to fill the gap in the market between their Grand Strategy games and traditional 4X. You can run *any* science fiction staple idea and none would look out of place. A civilisation of individuals ranging from unique megacorporations to generic governments, hive-minded eusocial species, robots and anything in between each have unique playstyles. It also has endgame "crises" of galaxy threatening proportions which needs elaborate teamwork to stop.
      • Excellent 40k mod for Stellaris: https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/WarhammerTotalConversion
      • And yes, there's Star Trek and Star Wars mods. The first is so popular that Paradox's making a Star Trek game based on Stellaris, Star Trek: Infinite, which drove one of the mod developers into a hissy fit like a little bitch and leaked images. Unfortunately, that one was a soulless cashgrab and was ultimately an abandoned failure.
    • Terra Invicta, 25% Stellaris, 25% Crusader Kings, 25% XCOM, 25% Twilight Struggle, all crazy fun. Aliens are spotted in outermost Kuiper Belt planetoids just when Russia declares on Ukraine in 2022. Notable for its highly asymmetrical gameplay, with each faction having wildly different playstyles and goals to achieve victory.
    • Total War series: Rome Total War, Medieval Total War, Empire Total War, Shogun Total War and of course, the Total War: Warhammer trilogy.
      • Rome 1 mods: Call to Arms: Warhammer and Fourth Age Total War and Medieval 2 mods: Call of Warhammer, Third Age Total War
  • Real-time Strategy
    • Age of Empires series. Classic RTS with a more Command and Conquer vibe then a 4X, which is more common for historical settings, though pretty much every unit has multiple counters so it tends to be a more complex game then normal fast-paced RTSs.
      • There's the original which is a curiosity at best since it was developed when RTS as a genre was still getting it's feet wet. Has a HD remaster and Definitive Edition remake.
      • The second game that is made of pure gold, with 42 civilizations to choose from, vibrant player base and ongoing developer support. Has HD remaster and Definitive Edition like the first one.
      • The third game is sadly little more than just Age of Mythology with guns and Online which is F2P game and also dead-ish (unless you play Project Celeste, which is still getting updated by fans). Third one got remastered with medieval weapons given an edge(understandably since medieval muskets were hit-and-miss) and with exotic African and Asian Dynasties added, as well as Native American factions' names and stereotypes fixed.
      • Age of Mythology mixes up the formula well, being a surprisingly good leap into 3D and having a splendid campaign that spans some 30 missions that see you jump all over the ancient western world and some other places while on an epic quest. Had a single expansion - The Titans which added the Atlanteans as a faction and explored the aftermath of the first game. We don't talk about the second expansion...
      • The fourth installment is good but it is currently a victim of AoE2's seniority since the latter has so much content that the 4 seems quite barren in comparison, though a number of new civs are underway. Made by Relic, or what's left of it after DOW3's blunder.
    • Battlezone, the 1998 strategy game, not the 1980 arcade game. Mixture of real time strategy and hover tank combat while fighting commies on the moon. Clunky, and as balanced as a one legged hippo, but its uniqueness, concept and immersion make it a classic. Got a second game that was tighter and better balanced but weaker plot and setting. Both got pretty decent HD remasters.
    • Command and Conquer, a franchise with more then four different series running at the time where you control varied forces trying to beat the crap out of each other. A pity what EA did to Westwood.
    • Company of Heroes and Men of War series which are basically RTSs based on the idea of commanding forces as if someone was playing a classic WW2 shooter. While there are hard counters in Company of Heroes it still focuses more on holding chokepoints, piecing defensive lines and utilizing sandbags and barbed wire. Men at War focuses on realistic damage and as such is more the ARMA to Company of Heroes Call of Duty 2.
    • Cossacks series, which covers 17th and 18th century, being the closest to /tg/'s desire to have "pike and shot setting". Most notable for ability to field absolutely gigantic armies of thousands upon thousands of soldiers.
      • American Conquest is an off-shot mini-series, expanding game mechanics from Cossacks and covering the period between Cortes conquest of Aztec Empire till American Revolutionary War. An expansion is dedicated to American Civil War.
    • Cultures series, but most importantly first two games. You got Amazons, Pimmons (Blue standard humanoids) and Bugmen. Imagine Settlers but more emphasis on family buildings and rising consumer goods demands as tech levels go up.
    • Dungeon Keeper, where you play as an evil overlord defending against pesky adventurers and goodie-two-shoes trying to conquer your dungeon, and play it like Sims on crack.
    • Empire Earth, Age of Empires but in 3D. Kind of primitive interface compared to today but quite pleasant graphics starting from literal ooga-booga Stone Age to extra-solar Cybernetics Age. Enjoyable. The second game added Grand Strategy elements such as "territory" areas for extra population and vital building capacity; also we got age-specific resources such as saltpeter for black powder eras, then uranium and oil for later ages, as well as research and age advancement being resource free, save for "technology points" gathered by libraries, temples and special trades which are paid equally for each tech in an era, so simple resource spending won't make someone win that easily. There is no third game, and any other claims are Heresy.
    • Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, shaved down shitty Empire Earth 1 spin-off just from Medieval to World War II era. Zero balance, and empires have disposable spell like abilities that eat up resources and are completely bonkers, like Soviets summoning Tunguska Meteor to one shot the enemy base for cheap. Dumpster fire.
    • Homeworld: THE iconic space video game of the early 00's. Basically Battlestar Galactica if the Galactica was tall instead of long (Relic originally wanted to make a BSG game, but couldn't get the license. Homeworld 2 vastly improved game play but the story was kinda crap. The pinnacle was Homeworld Cataclysm which has a truly epic narrative and extra Grimdark. Borrows heavily from the artwork of Chris Foss. There's a Homeworld 3 in development, but there are worrying signs it will be even more controversial than 2 as seen in its (ATTOW) recent demo. Let's hope Blackbird (The developers of 1 and 2, who split from Relic and formed their own studio) can fix things on time. They've tried and managed to write themselves into an corner. Multiplayer has regressed into being an short-lived arms race than anything else
    • Myth: the Fallen and Myth: Soulblighter: Honorary Real Time Tactics equivalent to WHFB Mordheim. Lead a Grimdark human brigade of rag-tag men-at-arms in an Irish-expy low fantasy setting sprinkled with Vedic World Cycle myths. Humans are mostly Irish, Welsh and Scottish expies with a dash of Saxons fighting against undead led by monstrously powerful "fallen" leaders who were heroes in the last cycle, tragically doomed to return as evil beings. Revolutionary for its time for 3D arrow and grenade/explosive physics, as well as some limited magic and relatively large scale fantasy battles. Both games have hours of music videos between each level with pages out of an illustrated book read by the player character which *never* gets boring.
    • Original War, most notable for its unique mix of RPG and RTS elements, with each unit representing an individual character with own backstory, personality and set of skills.
    • Patrician 3: Rise of the Hansa is pretty standard (and good) economic-transport sim, but it makes up with being related with the titular Hansa and the Baltic region during Late Medieval, which rarely show up as a setting despite being what is represented as the ISO Standard Medieval setting.
    • Railroad Tycoon 2 comes with absolutely amazing series of scenarios and an unique, fleshed out post-apo setting. No, not kidding. There are also dozens of fan-made maps further expanding on said setting.
    • Rise of Nations and especially Rise of Legends which had a steampunk faction and a "totally not the baddies from Stargate" faction. Looks like Age of Empires, but instead of limited resource tokens, map has limitless resource "outputs" like building a lumberyard whose reach defines how much output capacity there is with strict arbitrary limits per city center. City centers define economic output, while military buildings are independent and can be built anywhere within faction borders defined with cultural reach.
    • The Settlers series, especially the I-IV parts. This is less of a straight RTS and more a space-management game, where you're building the most efficient transport system for your settlement, particularly in first two games, with their iconic flag-and-road system. Plot-wise, S3 and 4 are great kitchen-sink settings and Amazons are hot.
    • Star Wars: Empire at War, so great that its developers keep maintaining it to this day. It's surprisingly in-depth, having both space and ground battles, and the Risk-like Galactic Conquest mode. Its expansion was a bit skubby due to the super OP Zann Consortium. Has a shitton of mods that make the game much more complex (Awakening of the Rebellion) and change the game period to other moments of Star Wars history, like the Clone Wars (Fall of the Republic), the Old Republic Era (Revan's Revenge) or the (pre-Disney) Thrawn Trilogy (Thrawn's Revenge).
    • Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Age of Empires 2 with Star Wars stuff, released at the same time as the Prequel Trilogy. It walked so that Empire at War could run.
    • Starcraft and Warcraft: 40K and Fantasy rip-offs respectively, although they were so successful that from video gamers' perspective the jedi are evil GW should be paying Blizzard.
    • Supreme Commander, the closest thing to "modern" remake of Total Annihilation and of course "the endless war IN SPESS!" setting that everyone loves so much. Has the most streamlined RTS system in existence.
    • Theocracy, in which you control one of Mesoamerican tribes with a goal of unifying the region. Then the Spanish come in kicking.
    • Total Annihilation The game that started it all when it it comes to 4X RTS. Not much of a story but it had great gameplay that laid the foundations for the stuff to come. There was also a fantasy sequel "Kingdoms" that had a great story and lore (rivaling that of Warcraft at the time) but abysmal gameplay.
    • Transarctica A bizarre mix of an economic sim, adventure game and a railroad simulator. After an experiment to slow down global warming caused a new ice-age, there are only massive trains going through the ice wasteland between the handful of surviving cities and coal mines. Your task is to bring Sun back from beyond the thick clouds surrounding Earth. Very atypical gameplay. And while the premise sounds familiar, it has nothing to do with Snowpiercer, insted being based on The Ice Company novels from the 80s.
    • Urban Assault: A quite obscure RTS/FPS hybrid released over half a year after BZ98. AI's so smart that the devs had to nerf it in some levels. Earth's as fucked up as 40k's Terra, and humanity is in disarray while two Xenos invade the world, and your mothership's basically a flying, silver and lightly-armed Dreadnought that can create armies from thin air. Game has quite a lot of Grimdark.
    • War for the Overworld: Modernized successor to Dungeon Keeper. Just as if not better than the second game. Named after the unreleased third game's subtitle.
    • Warfront: Turning Point: Command and Conquer Generals meets WW2, but everyone fielding experimental mecha, pulp super-weapons and other silly things. Notably, defense buildings come with FPS mode (and this can greatly increase their performance), while weather and terrain affect everything in variety of ways. Ironically the UI is centuries ahead of all C&C series.
    • Warlords: Battlecry: RTS with 9, 12, then 16(!!!) standard fantasy races with base building and 4 resources. Plenty fun, though always unbalanced. However, unique playstyles for all races along with very diverse set of customizable hero leaders makes it very enjoyable. The third game goes *entirely* to Warhammer Fantasy Battle territory with merchantile Empire humans fighting lizardmen in gold rich new continent, with a circular continent for elves to fight over.
  • Turn-based Strategy
    • Advance Wars - It's like Panzer General but Anime. Except for Days of Ruin; that game is Grimdark and thus manly.
    • Armoured Commander II - Roguelike tank warfare, taking you from 1939 to 1945, 500 tanks/vehicles and lots of by-year campaigns to choose from, along with taking many recognizable mechanics from Flames of War.
    • Battletech - 2018 game by HBS and Paradox. Set in the classic 3025 era, you and your little band of mercenaries have fun adventures in the little-explored rimward regions of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery. A princess lost her throne to her evil uncle (who looks a lot like Giancarlo Esposito) and you must help her regain it. So far it's the game that resembles the original tabletop the closest. It's also the first game to feature the Unseen since Harmony Gold got their shit kicked in. Get the Marauder, it's pure cheese especially with Called Shot Mastery. Game has a lot of mods, like the massive RogueTech (which adds the whole universe, Clans and Wobbies included). Game was so good that the nation and house added by it, the Aurigan Coalition and House Arano were fully canonized.
    • Battle Brothers - A WFRP-Warhammer Battle game, except without a license for that. You control an outfit of (unfit) mercenaries and randomly hired low-lifes, fighting all sorts of fantasy horrors and more mundane brigands in a tactical skirmish game. The world is just flat-out the Confederacy. It's a turn-based game, where you have to be careful about positioning, tactics, and equipment, or your men will die. They will probably die anyway. There's also a lot of randomness involved, so sometimes your best-laid plans will go to shit.
    • Fire Emblem - Advance Wars' twin brother who likes swords and magic rather than guns and tanks. Fire Emblem has heavy RPG elements, tasking you with managing a stable of characters with limited EXP to go around and the specter of permadeath hanging overhead. Awakening and later installments are not approved for being waifu delivery systems cleverly disguised as strategy games.
    • Jagged Alliance I & II, A PMC is you! First game lets you fight over special trees that give cancer cure and sell the sap on a single island, the sequel is far bigger. You got a tyrant queen in a Latin American gold-rich country so you run around and fight her forces, given a seed money by the exiled King, then finance the rest of the war yourself using gold mined. Imagine oldschool XCOM with realistic weapons and more ballistics.
    • King of Dragon Pass
    • Panzer General - The first decent "Tabletop WW2 meets PC" back in '94, it's the second inspiration for Nazi Equipment and is the Mecca of wehraboo'ism. Spawned an entire series of games.
      • Of note from that series: Fantasy General, which is, other than some rather questionable AI balancing, a fairly fun "D&D Wargame" style affair.
    • Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale a Japanese game about running a shop, which sells and buys items used by dungeon-crawling adventurers. Much more engaging than it sounds and full of cutting humour. Capitalism, ho!
    • Templar Battleforce Do you want to play a Space Hulk game with all the serial numbers filed off, which expands into a much larger campaign dealing with a "Tyranid" infestation, "imperial" corruption, and "Genestealer" cultists? Then you play this. A top-down, turn-based squad game, you control the titular "Templar Battleforce (Space Marine Company)" dealing with a Terrox infestation (Tyranid Splinter Fleet) which has attacked your Battle-Barge. After repelling the infestation, you chase the surviving Terrox down to the recently settled planet below.
    • Valkyria Chronicles series - JRPG fantasy world version of World War II. Quite a bit of depth and a supporting cast of characters.
    • The UFO: After[X] series which is essentially an X-Com made grimdark. How grim? The bad ending of the first game, Aftermath, is canon.
    • The original X-COM: UFO Defense and its original sequels, Terror from the Deep and Apocalypse.
      • Phoenix Point - A spiritual successor to Terror from the Deep, from the hands of Gollop himself. It's even more difficult than the original at times, and that's saying something.
    • The new XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its sequel, XCOM 2.
      • XCOM and XCOM 2 mods: The Long War. Both versions add dramatically to their respective games, transforming them from comparatively quick, light experiences to fatigue-worn wars. Buckle up. Plays a lot like Valkyria Chronicles except with destructible terrain and lots of chest-high walls.

Role-Playing Games[edit]

  • cRPGs
    • Albion Duo of space janitors crash-land on a planet that will be soon strip-mined, only to find out there is local, if Iron Age tier population of few intelligent species.
    • Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura Fallout, but set in a fantasy world where magic and technology coexist and fight each other. The story takes your party across the world as you try to unravel a plot that threatens not only the world but the very concept of life itself.
    • Arx Fatalis A decent but pretty generic RPG if not for the fact that you appear in an underground kingdom in a world that had it's sun extinguished and surface turned into frozen waste. The magic system is also unique as you perform gestures with your mouse in order to cast spells, which is as fun as it is inconvenient (mage-knight build is a necessity due to this).
    • Baldur's Gate I & II - The games that placed BioWare's name on the map, and the first ray of sunlight that came after the dark storm that were TSR's final days.
    • Battle for Wesnoth An Aussie who played too much jRPGs made a hex-based battle mini games that happens to be one of the more balanced things on the market.
    • Betrayal at Krondor
    • Darklands Adventures of a roaming party in the 15th century Holy Roman Empire Germany. Probably the lowest possible low fantasy to still qualify as such, rather than just historical setting. Alchemy potions substitute magic spells, intercessions of specific saints replace clergy magic.
    • Deus Ex series. THE cyberpunk RPG. So good that it managed to incorporate nearly every conspiracy theory into its story and make them actually work well together. A game that has stood the test of time, with its predictions on terrorism, the dominance of corporations and even the effects of a pandemic on modern society being uncomfortably accurate. What a shame.
    • Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box Series (also includes some Buck Rogers games because of Lorraine Williams)
    • The Elder Scrolls especially Daggerfall and Morrowind, as Oblivion and Skyrim are pretty generic and thus boring (but in exchange you can mod them until they're completely unrecognizable from vanilla).
    • Fallout series - Black Isle Studios' most famous RPG series and successor to Wasteland. The first and second games are legendary, and Tactics is also decent, albeit flawed and extremely controversial fluff-wise. A pity Interplay screwed them over. Bethesda's games are not as good as the ones made by Black Isle/Obsidian (because Bethesda doesn't really understand Fallout universe), but they have their own charm.
    • Icewind Dale
    • Might and Magic from 1 to 8, then X. Might and Magic 9 does not exist.
    • Monster Hunter, since it's a fantasy game series about tearing out the huge guts of huge monsters.
    • Neverwinter Nights
    • Planescape: Torment Storyfags' and Lorefags' wet dream.
    • Shadowrun series.
    • System Shock series. The first one is cyberpunk RPG/dungeoncrawler, heavily inspired by Ultima Underworld; the second one is proto-Deus Ex meets Alien. Later developers of the second game went to make BioShock games. The original got a remake that's just as good, with sequel in development. There's supposedly a third game in development, but it's stuck in dev hell and probably never going to happen.
    • The Temple of Elemental Evil
    • Ultima series - see Might & Magic above and retain the "ignore 9" rule.
    • Underrail Metro 2033 (setting) meets classic Fallout (gameplay) and decides to have a foursome with cosmic horror and space opera. Try it or get dominated, pipeworker.
    • Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines/Redemption Bloodlines was Troika's last hurrah and after you apply the official and fan patches you will see why. Redemption is also good but not as much as BL. Paradox has been trying to make a sequel to Bloodlines for a while, but... well... it's been struck by one disaster after another and it isn't even out yet, to the point the guys with the Platypus skeleton as a logo almost cancelled it at one point.
    • Wasteland series - The original post-apocalyptic RPG from 1988 by Brian Fargo, which inspired many others. Had a couple of sequels in recent times, which are also good.
    • Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
  • Modern RPGs
    • Age of Decadence — A game made by a couple of Fallout fans that had been in development for more than 10 years. A hardcore turn-based cRPG set in post-apocalyptic Roman-themed setting with complex branching storylines and lots of factions.
    • Baldur's Gate 3 - Brian Fargo still has the touch. Larian filled in for BI/Obsidian for this one, and it's become so beloved it brought Steam to its knees!
    • The Banner Saga - A world of pure Grim, facing a tide of horrific Darkness. Your group of vikings and their horned buddies try to survive all sorts of horrors, and hopefully stop the apocalypse before it kills them all.
    • Dark Souls, due to its moody Berserk-inspired atmosphere, emphasis on exploration, and merciless learning curve. Compelling story and characters are a major plus, also contains large amounts of death and RAGE. The tagline isn't 'Prepare to Die' for no reason.
      • To a lesser extent, the other "Soulsborne" games (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring).
    • Dragon's Dogma, as it's quite down-to-earth and moody compared to most jRPGs, lots of cool looking western-style monsters (The Chimerae are living versions of an Etruscan statue), lovable callbacks to the roguelikes of old, and is surprisingly deep mechanics-wise (Not many games allow you to grab someone and throw them off a cliff to their deaths). The game even has Berserk armor sets and weapons based on Guts and Griffith's Golden Age arc get-ups, which were sadly removed from the PC version. Fortunately, the fanbase came to the rescue and restored the armors through a mod here. A fun fact from it is that two thirds of the game got cut during its development. The second game adds most of the things Hideaki Itsuno couldn't for the first, although it had one hell of a messy PC release.
    • Deus Ex: Human Revolution While not nearly as broad or deep as the original, it still manages to capture some of it's essence and is a fine RPG in it's own right.
    • Dragon Age: Origins — A last glimpse of BioWare's former glory. Not the most original of their games, but still massive in terms of amount of content and easily one of the most polished ones. Sequels basically became fantasy Mass Effect wannabes with steady decline in quality overall. Has the added bonus of having an actual conclusion; the sequels tend to end on unsatisfying cliffhangers.
    • Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 - Larian Studios' main game series before the became worldwide stars with BG3. Horrible things are happening across Rivellon due to a weird magic called Source, and it's your job to stop the issue. Prequels to Divine Divinity (2002), a finest Diablo clone ever made.
    • Disco Elysium Planescape: Torment, except you're an Alcoholic, deadbeat detective. Very short game, especially for the genre, but the writing, atmosphere and world-building more than make up for it. Sadly it was taken from its original developers by their publisher, which backfired horribly for the latter.
    • Expeditions: Conquistador and Viking and Rome.
    • Fallout: New Vegas Made by the team that made the classics, and it shows.
    • Kingdom Come: Deliverance A truly generic story of "from zero to hero", involving blacksmith's son climbing the social ladder of medieval society until knighthood. But what makes the game unique is the fact it's a historical RPG, set in specific area of Bohemia during a specific period with autistic levels of research behind it, providing more data about its own setting than your typical edutainment game.
    • Legend of Grimrock
    • Mass Effect Trilogy Grand space opera to rival other famous space-operas in the levels of epic. First game was pretty flawed and felt like a dumbed down KotOR game, but it also had a rather fleshed out universe (heavily inspired by likes of Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica) and lots of atmosphere. Second one fixed a lot of gameplay problems of the original and became fans favourite, but because of lead writer departure from the studio it also undergone noticeable changes in tone. And the third game despite having some decent moments was basically a quick cashgrab by EA that had also delivered one of the worst endings in videogames history and forever tarnished BioWare's reputation. You can safely ignore the Andromeda, because it's no longer even "so bad it's good" game, just poorly written and painfully mediocre.
    • Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor A fun uruk/olog hunting/recruiting game with some contentious framing, particularly in the sequel (Monstergirl Shelob, among other things). Think of it as "Arkham's Creed: Middle-Earth Edition."
    • Pathfinder Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous - if you want to scratch your Baldur's Gate 1 itch, there's your best chance.
    • Pillars of Eternity Set in the world of Eora where souls and reincarnations are tangible and measurable rather than being metaphysical/religious concepts. With the advance of technology and Animancy (science of souls) the world is set up for some radical upheavals, and that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. During its Kickstarter campaign it was billed as a spiritual successor to Infinity Engine games (and with creative leads of Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale 2 actually being at the helm of the project), but it kind of felt flat and underwhelming overall, despite being totally competent; just another proof that no man ever steps in the same river twice. It's sequel, Deadfire, had adressed a fair amount of fan criticism, changed the venue, added a bunch of new mechanics and went from trying to ape old IE games to what's basically "New Vegas in fantasy Polynesia with isometric view and RTwP combat", only to fail miserably in sales.
    • Solasta: Crown of the Magister Take a trimmed-down version of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition SRD, homebrew some new subclasses and put together a system that allows you to create your own adventures.
    • Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and The Sith Lords — Games set four thousand years before the Lucas movies. Both games are pretty good, but drastically different in tone: first game was a perfect Star Wars adventure, a gulp of fresh air in prequel era; the second game is diamond in the rough: it's more grimdark and PTSD and actually attempts a philosophical critique of Star Wars universe from Nietzschean perspective, but because of rushed development a lot of its content were either cut (but there's TSL Restored Content Mod which is a must-have for any playthrough) or felt undercooked. There's also Bioware's MMO, which has some good stories, but basic gameplay.
    • State of Decay, the only good thing that came out of the early 2010s zombie craze. If you ever planned to run a zombie campaign, just rip the whole thing off - unlike other vidya rip-offs, this one works out great. Only the first game is approved. Special mention goes to the second dlc too. Run a military outpost who's job is to isolate and operate around a infected overun city as the world around you slowly falls apart from other outbreaks. Not TOO different from the base game and pretty short but there really isn't any other game out there with this set up. Great mine for pnp ideas.
    • The Witcher series - based on a series of Polish novels about the eponymous Geralt of Rivia, a magically and alchemically enhanced monster hunter known as a Witcher, and his adventures across the world.
    • Tyranny From the same devs that made Pillars of Eternity. This time you are cast into the world of Terratus, a high-fantasy world which is just about to exit its Bronze Age, and as another twist to the ol' formula, you are a mid-ranking minion of the setting's overlord tasked with mediating conflicts and bringing "justice" through their empire. Story and gameplay are just as good as PoE, but the game was released in a rushed state with many things missing. Still, good for ~20hrs of fun or as an entry-level cRPG.

Adventure Games[edit]

  • Ace Attorney series: A wacky, idealistic series about proving people's innocence in court. Lots of puzzles and investigating. Also basically THE entry point for people wanting to get into visual novels, since there's still some gameplay.
  • Animation Arts: Not the game, but a German game dev studio. If you ever wanted to run a cheesy game that's either pulp or B-movie, look no further for inspiration, since this is their specialty.
  • Beneath a Steel Sky: Great cyberpunk themes and rich imagery. Released as freeware by the original developers.
  • Blade Runner: It's a Blade Runner game and it's one of the best things that ever happened in the genre, no need for more recommendations.
  • Broken Sword series: Templars, ancient conspiracies, interesting characters and well-written plot that is mineable even for tabletop games. Well, first two games definitely are, after that there was a certain decline in quality.
  • Chains of Satinav and Memoria: Exactly how many adventure games do you know that are set in Dere and are good?
  • Darksiders: A 3rd person hack and slash game made by the folks that developed Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium before it got canned. The premise is that it's the end of days and angels and demons are duking it out for control of earth, you play as The Four Horseman of the Apocalypses Death, Strife, Fury, and War. In the first game you play as War, the second Death, the third Fury, and the prequel spinoff you play as Strife and War. Takes a lot of it's aesthetic from Warhammer and the Bible but still stands on it's own as a fun and enjoyable game franchise, or at least the first two manage that...
  • The DIG: A bunch of astronauts stop an asteroid from hitting earth, only to find out it's really an alien starship that whisks them to a desolate planet on the other side of the galaxy whose inhabitants - who have a huge fetish for the platonic solids - are nowhere to be found. Features a lot of really complex hard-science plot points, difficult-as-fuck puzzles, and Steve Blum as an arrogant German scientist.
  • Fallen London: The game that Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies mentioned down below originated from. While a horrifying grindfest even without taking into account some side-quests (which can take months to complete even with frequent farms), the game has incredible lore and writing coupled with an original Victorian London setting that holds many surprises while allowing you to roleplay as essentially any Bri'ish character archetype in existence, from the classic "Gentleman Adventurer" to a debauched hedonist in the style of Oscar Wilde, all of which make the grind (mostly) worth the effort.
  • I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: A perfect adaptation of the original book. Harlan Ellison (the author of the original story) played a huge role in its development, with the man himself voicing AM. Be warned though, the game, like its source, is one of the most Grimdark works of the late 20th century. While you can get a (slightly) happier ending than in the original, it's also possible to end up with an even worse and horrific end for all five survivors.
  • Indiana Jones and the Fate Of Atlantis: One of the classics that you can't just go wrong with. Aside being a good adventure game by itself, comes with kinda-sorta branching plot, so you can approach same situations differently.
  • King's Quest VI: Heir Today Gone Tomorrow: Just read the title and ask yourself what the game can be about. This series is downright ancient, so be warned. VI is well regarded as the best one and holds up relatively well, though fan remakes of the older games in the style of VI are also available.
  • Millennia: Altered Destinies: You are given a fully armed TARDIS-like fighter craft that can travel in time and space and is armed by some weird hooded aliens called "Hoods"(yeah). They gave you the ship to go to another galaxy, which will be conquered by a microscopic species using technology called Microids. You have the DNA of four races in your ship which you'll plant across the galaxy, and adjust their development so four species share the galaxy and destroy the microids, while staying high tech to repair the ship for your return home. How does that work? Time fucking travel every time! Every time you do something important the entire galaxy shudders in a time storm as the endgame equation of 100 turns plays out differently, for 100 solar systems, 100 centuries, one century per point of divergence. You have 4 prophet-like emissaries in each race which you can use to talk and manipulate a species, as well as taking inventions from species, going back in time and making them even stronger/different/weaker(the last one is to make sure all races have 25% of the galaxy and microids are wiped out). Oh, you'll also fight your alternate self from another timeline fighting under Microids' pay as well as Hoods from other timelines. It is as insane and unique as it sounds.
  • Monkey Island series: One of the most definitive things to ever happen to the genre, plus it's a great pirate-themed series that both spoofs and reaffirms a lot of cliches related with own content.
  • Myst: A classic video game where you travel to the island of Myst, a magical place located inside a book, and must uncover the mystery of what happened to it's owners by traveling into other books.
  • Policenauts: Early Hideo Kojima makes a game where Lethal Weapon meets cyberpunk.
  • The Prince and the Coward (Also known as Książę i Tchórz): A Polish game that can be best summed up as "ISO Standard Medieval Fantasy gets the Monkey Island treatment". An excellent fan-translation exists that manages to keep the original tone and now even GOG re-released it.
  • Pathologic (also known as Pestilence or Мор. Утопия): a truly bizarre and unique Russian game combining adventure, survival, role-playing and lots of nightmarish vibes. Boasts headache-inducing lore and a persistent world, so things roll regardless of the player interfering or not. Got a HD re-release recently with proper translation, so non-Slavs can finally enjoy the game - the previous English translation was a nightmare by itself.
    • Pathologic 2: A remake of the original (or, rather, one storyline of the original), but with updated graphics and mechanics plus a couple of story tweaks. Retains many of the anxiety-inducing survival mechanics and nightmarish atmosphere of the first game and, generally, is a much more streamlined experience. As such, it is generally recommended to newcomers over the original. Only ⅓ of the original game is there, due to limitations in budget; the rest may come depending on how well the game sells (devs have confirmed they are working on the bachelor's campaign, however).
  • Professor Layton series: A refined gentleman investigates mysteries by solving lateral-thinking puzzles. Beautiful watercolor art and solid writing, though the puzzle setups become increasingly absurd as the series goes on. A great series to mine for dungeon puzzles. Any games after the first six are not approved, due to the writing devolving into cliche anime bullshit and a distinct drop in puzzle quality after the death of designer Akira Tago.
  • Sanitarium: Without giving out too much, let's just say that you waking up from a coma with no memory of who you are after a brutal car-accident is the least weird thing you will encounter here.
  • Star Control/Free Stars series: A mess of alien races in the grand tradition of Niven et al. kill the shit out of each other. First game is turn-based strategy, second game is somewhere between an RPG and an adventure game; both have a surprisingly deep arcade combat system. The second game was released as open-source software by the developers, and a third proper entry is in development.
  • The Void (also known as Turgor/Тургор): A really weird one, even more so than Pathologic (from the same creators too). You died and you've ended up in a strange realm between life and death, where twisted men with unusual morality (Brothers) and strange women with many hearts (Sisters) live. That realm overflows with magical color that allows you to grow gardens and fight monsters. However, the realm is dying and you have to either find a way out or pump the color onto the Sister you choose. This one can be extremely hard, as the game won't hold your hand nor stop you from making lethal mistakes (like pissing off the Brothers before you're ready to face them, or accidentally killing a Sister by giving her the wrong colors) and you have to be careful with your color, as you need it to live and travel across the Void, you can waste it if you're not careful, and using too much (whether for your spells or on the Sisters) WILL damage the Void and bring even worse monsters to it.
  • Vangers: A fuckin' weird Russian game about delivering bugs to other bugs in your bug-like car in a world that's filled with bugs and feels like "A Bug's Life" on a DMT trip. Honestly though, if you're a GM who wants to present their players with a totally alien and incomprehensible setting, then this game does it with flying colours.

Warhammer Games[edit]

Miscellaneous[edit]

  • Roguelikes
    • Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead a post-apocalyptic top-down survival game that looks like Dwarf Fortress with a texture pack and lets you drive cars into zombies.
    • Cultist Simulator is a grind-heavy, card-based game about being too curious about things that no man should know about and slowly building a cult to some demonic abomination... or die trying.
    • Curious Expedition which pokes fun at the pulp adventure genre; think Hollow Earth as a black comedy
    • Darkest Dungeon the newest lovecraftian dungeon crawler with grimdark setting and overall edginess. And its sequel.
    • Don't Starve a pretty-looking survival and exploration game that's fun with friends, and does horror like The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.
    • DRL (DOOM The Roguelike) - DOOM, but as a roguelike with lots of extra stuff. It's also gonna rip and tear you if you underestimate your foes.
      • Jupiter Hell - DRL's spiritual successor, from the same creator.
    • Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
    • Highfleet: A strategy/action roguelike where you command a fleet of "Romani Empire(Not-Imperial-Russia)" Methane-operated airships through the deserts of Gerat(If you read it in Russian "G" is pronounced "H", real subtle for Afghan capital city Herat) in order to capture a nuclear reactor where neither planet size, ship weights and lifting power of methane combustion makes any sense. But fuck logic, it has insane scenes of Russian-expy airship duels and authentic USSR-Era radar/air travel immersion. It is also published by risen-from-the-dead MicroProse, of Civilization and X-COM fame.
    • Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures a random-gen adventure game that almost operates like a dungeon crawler and came 20 years too early to get on the roguelike hype.
    • Nethack: One of the original Roguelikes. Everything will try to kill you, and most will succeed at least once.
    • NEOScavenger much like Cataclysm (gameplay, genre, even the setting is similar), an exploration hex-crawl to surpass all hex-crawls.
      • OSTRANauts - NEOScavenger in SPACE.
    • Pathway, the closest thing to having Hollow Earth Expedition vidya
    • Pixel Dungeon and it's forks coffee break roguelike optimized for phones. FOSS so there's tons of forks. Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a very good version and is on Android Play Store and F-Droid
    • Quasimorph - A weird mix of DOOM, XCOM Apocalypse and the "Roza Mira", an utterly insane Soviet writer's vision of the afterlife. Weird and brutal as fuck.
    • Roadwarden, a text-based RPG about being, well, a Roadwarden in Totally-Not-Border-Prince-Confederacy. The game somehow managed being unlicensed Warhammer media without GW suing anyone, and, more miraculously, delivering mudcore low fantasy without being shit.
    • Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies Adventuring out into a WTF eldritch horror setting under the flag of Victorian Britain. Gameplay-wise, the games are just awful grinders, but it's their setting and quests that make them interesting, as long as comically dark settings are your thing.
    • TEARDOWN, a Space-Hulk roguelike
    • WarpRogue, a 40K-inspired roguelike
  • Good VR games
    • Blade and Sorcery - Basically HDHaHG but with a fantasy bent and actual levels you can play in instead of just testing out weapons in various maps.
    • Half Life Alyx - A prequel (or so it seems) to the Half Life series below and one of the better VR games out there. Without major spoilers, it is a scifi shooter with some cosmic horror elements.
    • Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades - this VR title is unique for being as close to a true-to-life firearms simulator as you can get, having over 400 accurately modeled and functioning firearms ranging from flintlocks to modern weapons. Its also incredibly goofy, with all enemies being giant sentient hot dogs and a few oddball toys thrown in. It's also effectively Team Fortress 2 VR, as the game includes all the stock weapons from TF2 thanks to a collaboration with Valve.
  • Good FPS games
    • AMID EVIL - You're a hunk with a silver helm and a huge axe that has to fight the hordes of Evil itself to save the universe. Heavily inspired by id and Raven's shooters, particularly Hexen. Also has surprisingly optimized performance for an Unreal Engine game, capable of running in potatoes at playable speeds.
    • Amnesia series, The first game in the series rekindled the survival horror genre and was pants-shittingly scary through a clever use of jumpscares, ingenious mechanics discouraging directly looking at the enemies and an amazing atmosphere of gothic horror which slowly turns into the cosmic variety as the story progresses. Unfortunately the latter sequels became a victim of their own success mostly due to oversaturation of survival horror genre, but are nevertheless fine games in their own right.
    • Area 51, done two times, the first one is a surprisingly good straightforward game with tone of Illuminati-serving-Aliens lore with a Noblebright plot as you get DNA from an imprisoned rogue Grey voiced by MARILYN MANSON and become a shapeshifting warrior, fighting against Greys and Illuminati through Area 51 and break their yoke on Earth. The remake is a shit-tier bland FPS with all references to fighting aliens removed, surprise, bad guy is a former operative gone bad. The second is also notable for being one of Midway's final games, as they were mid-collapse during its development and it shows.
    • Atomic Heart: Fallout: Soviet Union Edition with crazier robots. You're a special forces major sent to bring back order to a research facility that was developing a Soviet super-internet where everything went to hell. Mick Gordon made the music for it. It's one helluva love letter to the Soviet Era, although it doesn't hold back one bit in criticizing it.
    • Bioshock series: Bunch of retro-aesthetics crammed into FPS/RPG hybrid games with what passes as a rich plot and world-building within the genre. Arguing over its content used to be prime skub material, now it's mostly forgotten. Short summary, it's a FPS with a quasi-magic spell system which is genetic manipulation or quantum entanglement depending on the game, usable by off-hand when wielding a pistol. Locales are always isolated cities built according to a radical ideology (Anarchocapitalism for 1 and 2, Theocratic Corporatocracy for Infinite) where real-world human nature fucks it up as usual.
    • Borderlands 2, a memetic lolsrandom dumb game, but special mention goes to Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC, as it is a role-playing session involving main characters, with all the crazy hijinks of Borderlands involved.
    • Crysis, Three games provide a very moddable engine with a very versatile set of physics combined with a pretty absurdly large modding community that has among other things, created a perfectly workable Mech Warrior game out of Crysis Warhead. Even if you don't care for nanosuit action, the mods alone are worth checking out.
    • Deep Rock Galactic Squats the video game. Space Dwarf miners under a galactic megacorporation armed with big guns go digging into a mineral rich planet infested with giant bugs.
    • Destiny 2: You are a Jedi Guardian and with the power of the Force Light you have to fight multiple enemies such as the Empire Cabal, the CIS Vex, the Zann Consortium Fallen, the Yuuzhan Vong Hive, and, of course, the forces of the Dark side Darkness. In all seriousness, it has a surprisingly deep lore, sometimes grimdark enough to make Warhammer 40,000 blushes. A good game if you have hundred of hours to kill.
    • Dishonored 1 and 2, the spiritual successor to Thief except now you are a supernatural assassin in a proto-dieselpunk edwardian-era-esque steampunk world. Good story and fun gameplay with plenty of assassination options. Corvo (your guy) also shares voices with Garrett
    • DOOM, Hexen, and Heretic: With a vibrant community because the games are easy to mod and has produced no shortage of mods (or WADs as they're called in the community (officially, the file extension 'WAD' means 'Where's All the Data?').) Interestingly, Doom was inspired by a D&D game run with Lead Dev John Carmack as the DM. Director John Romero's character recklessly gave a "demonicron" to a demon in exchange for the magic Daikatana which caused demons to overrun the material plane and the world to end. Visually, parts of the games (Hexen and Heretic especially) are reminiscent of a gothic dungeon.
    • Escape From Butcher Bay a Riddick-licensed game that combines great stealth elements with even better combat sequences and a slight horror vibe, all in the sauce made off used future aesthetics.
    • EYE: Divine Cybermancy: A really weird FPS/RPG due to its cyberpunk fantasy aesthetics, almost an RPG. Extremely buggy due to being a Source Engine game that wasn't made by Valve. The developers absolutely love Warhammer 40,000, made the setting for EYE a lawyer-friendly clone of 40k, and were eventually hired by GW to make the 40k game they wanted to make in the first place.
    • Far Cry series, which has completely different tone depending on installment and is just one huge mine of ideas with equal potential for extremely pulpy scenarios and extremely thought-provoking ones. Special mentions go to Far Cry 2, for being the closest the series ever got to an immersive sim, Far Cry 3, which pretty much reinvented the franchise, and its standalone expansion Blood Dragon, which is a hilarious parody of the 80s neon aesthetic. Anything that's released after Far Cry 3 is not approved for being either heavily rehashed or just completely unnecessary. Quick rundown for all the Far Cries: Be murderhobo for hire in bugfuck nowhere, do drugs, spiritual journey, and kill a morally complex and sometimes affably evil leader.
    • F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) : A near-future sci-fi horror tale. You're a member of a Special Forces team that has to deal with rogue clones controlled by a cannibal psychic. Not everything is what it seems, though, and the facility you fight in has several dark secrets. Your dude has the power to slow his own perception of time and can wield all sorts of weird weapons. The AI is also amazing by FPS standards. Of course, the first game is the best, while the second has a great story but regressed a bit on the gameplay. The DLCs and the third game are not good, in part due to having different developers.
    • Freespace & Freespace II: The last major standalone space flight sim, ending the genre that had started with Wing Commander and X-Wing/TIE-Fighter.
    • Guns of Icarus, a steampunk flying team deathmatch with set roles.
    • Half Life series, If you don't know what this is then you may want to check your head or move out from that rock on the bottom of Marianna's Trench you've been living under. In any case - you are a theoretical physicist in power armor who is trying to fix an experiment gone wrong & get out of a cutting-edge government research facility while both aliens and the military are gunning for your head, and things only escalate/get weirder from then on.
    • Hunt: Showdown - a pseudo-battle royal that puts the 'hard' in 'Hardass' and where the goal isn't mindless slaughter, but hunting demons in the swamps of Louisiana and getting out alive. Also the setting is pre-WWI, so expect a lot of bolt-action.
    • Iron Storm - it's 1964 and the World War I is still going on, with complete stalemate perpetuated by industrialists on both sides. Your mission is to infiltrate and destroy nuclear program of the "bad" side. W40k games wish they were this good in presenting endless, senseless war.
    • Mirror's Edge: Set in a cyberpunk-lite police-city-state, you play as Faith Connors - a Runner operating outside of the city's comfortable but oppressive system who's job is to deliver sensitive goods and info to private individuals, oh and you do this by parkouring the fuck out of gorgeous urban environments, oftentimes on top of skyscrapers.
    • Outer Worlds: Obsidian Entertainment's newest gem(company that made most western cRPG's), think Fallout: New Vegas in distant planets where corporations have become literal governments and run colonies like company towns. Add a dash of Loot-n-Shoot with weapon levels like Borderlands, Destiny or Shadow Warrior 2 and you got it.
    • Outlaws: A mid 90s shooter from LucasArts, where you are James Anderson, retired US Marshall that has to avenge his wife and rescue the kidnapped daughter. Does fantastic job with all possible Wild West cliches and staples and if you divide number of enemies by 10, you have a ready-to-use campaign, along with fleshed out characters and generic, but still engaging genre story. More importantly, despite its age, still plays great and builds atmosphere better than modern games even wish to.
    • Penumbra series: The easiest way to describe it is to call it modern take on At the Mountains of Madness, only set in Greenland and with massive conspiracy looming over the story. Warning, very tense horror games (while avoiding jump scares) with unique control and physics system, so it might not be your cup of tea.
    • Quake: At least the early games, for similar reasons for DOOM (they were both made by the same company). Quake 1 is a good and challenging FPS that takes cues from Lovecraft in terms of environments and monster designs. Quake 2 is somewhat easier, but is deliciously grimdark sci-fi; it's about fighting cyborg aliens that make more of themselves by capturing conquered races and fitting them with cybernetics/forcing them into a hive mind against their will.
    • Republic Commando, baby's first tactical co-op shooter, but damn if it isn't a good one. Never got a sequel, but one of the few good things Disney's done was to canonize it.
    • S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series: Roadside Picnic: The Video Game. A nice combination of free roaming, excellent gunplay, tense atmosphere and really freaky lore. Chornobyl/Chernobyl was a psychic project and the explosion was a cover-up, now it's Fallout-lite around it with scavengers, mutated monstrosities and fucked-up psychic phenomena that kill everything in their path (If you start hearing alarms and the sky turns red, SEEK REFUGE IMMEDIATELY OR YOU WILL DIE). A sequel is in development, which presses on despite the war.
    • Subnautica: absolutely gorgeous-looking open-world survival game set on an alien ocean planet. Your goals are to stay alive and eventually leave the planet, but in order to do that you need to continuously explore the planet and keep going deeper into the abyss. That bright and colorful world you’re in gets progressively scarier and more dangerous as there are all kinds of giant sea monsters lurking in the murky depths. The sequel expands on things by taking place in the arctic, allowing for more land-based action and throwing in extreme weather. Go on, dive into darkest ocean with no lights on.
    • Thief 1 & 2, the grand daddy of stealth games, with one of the most original settings ever created for games (a combination of industrial - but not steampunk - medieval and pagan elements). Strong story, good characters and makes you feel like a master thief indeed. Third game is good provided you get the Sneaky Update. Reboot from 2014 is unapproved and shunned.
    • Team Fortress 2, a game descended from a Quake mod now over 10 years old and still going strong, is a multiplayer FPS with a 1960s theme where players pick a team, one of 9 different classes, and battle to the death. Also, hats. Two hats in this game are 40k references, allowing you to dress your Heavy up as an Ork.
    • Trepang2: Inspired by the original FEAR and developed by just 4 people. You're basically a walking superweapon that fights his way through a megacorp, cults and monstrous horrors.
    • Titanfall: fast-paced sci-fi shooter that slows down the action to drop you into a giant mech. The second game is even better(with an actual single-player storyline), but Respawn fucked up the release (released it at the same time as the then-current Call of Duty and Battlefield games at the height of their rivalry), and both Respawn and EA fucked over the game in general.
    • Wolfenstein series: Combines sci-fi, fantasy and World War II elements amidst the Nazi-killing. This series is downright ancient, predating DOOM and the FPS genre entirely.
  • Good TPS games
    • Brütal Legend: A cult classic from Double Fine that sees you as a roadie transported into a heavy-metal fantasy world, so if you ever wanted to play in all of those kickass over-the-top worlds from heavy metal album covers, now you can. The game also mixes in rts and driving elements if that's your thing.
    • Destroy All Humans: You take the role of a b-movie alien invader out to conquer a batshit 50s America with a cool array of weapons, psionic powers and a scout saucer that can wipe out whole divisions of pathetic humans. First game is the high point with the later entries becoming worse overall.
    • Earth Defense Force: You play the role of a soldier in the Planetary Defense Force of Holy Terra as foul Xenos scum attempt to invade your hometurf. Prove to the invaders that the EDF is not a force to be reckoned with in several titles that have you using ridiculous wargear and playstyles in order to stop the invaders from turning Earth into their galactic parking lot.
    • Freedom Fighters: Another baby's first tactical shooter to fulfil your Red Dawn fantasies.
    • Ghost of a Tale Best described as Redwall-like stealth simulator & collect-a-thon. Has a fair amount of interesting lore, a neat fairy-tale aesthetic and a surprisingly sprawling and detailed map for what is basically a fortress in the boonies.
    • Helldivers and its sequel - the first is a top-down shooter and the second is a more traditional third-person shooter. You play as a Helldiver, fighting to spread Managed Democracy in the vein of the Starship Troopers movie, against enemies like discount Tyranids and communist robots. Much like 40K's Imperium, you hilariously die in droves for an awful and brutal dictatorship while shouting slogans, though it's definitely entirely humanity's fault for it this time around.Edit under investigation for treason. Possibly unsurprisingly, Arrowhead Game Studios' CEO has multiple Warhammer armies and has said that Orcs & Goblins are popular around the place. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell! DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN RESTORED!
    • Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and Emperor's Tomb Despite what you might think, it's LucasArt ripping-off Tomb Raider, not the other way around.
    • Max Payne 1 & 2 Finest product of the neo-noir genre, especially the second game. Amazingly strong story in both games, with a lot of Norse references in the first one. Also, the game that introduced bullet time as game mechanics.
    • Of Orcs and Men A twist of the standard "evil orcish hordes invade the human kingdoms" where you (an orc) have your lands invaded by the evil human hordes and must embark on a desperate mission to kill the human emperor whilst being aided by a goblin assassin named...Styx. The game is also special for taking the combat system of Witcher 1 and expanding upon it which you will either love or hate.
    • Overlord 1 & 2 You play as a Big Bad Evil Guy out to conquer a (seemingly) standard western fantasy world using ugly-cute-maniacal goblinoid minions. The first game especially is also a good parody and deconstruction of standard western fantasy setting and the nature of evil & corruption of good.
    • Prince of Persia, especially the Sands of Time trilogy. Accept no substitute for Arabian Nights game.
    • Remnant: From the Ashes and Remnant 2, Dark Souls with guns and roguelike elements. What's not to love?
    • Severance: Blade of Darkness Some eight years before Demon Souls you had Severance, while the setting is somewhat generic-ish blade & sorcery meets LOTR, the moody atmosphere, unforgiving gameplay and fun combat more than make up for it. If you have a thing for Soulslike this is just for you.
    • Styx series Great tps assassination games set in a unique high fantasy setting that has you playing as a goblin of all things. Both games are great though the second one takes itself somewhat less seriously than the first. Chronologically a prequel/spinoff to the Of Orc and Men above.
    • Tomb Raider series Preferably games created by original studio, Core Design, but anything up to Underworld goes. A swift balance between serious and pulp tone, providing simple plots and a more and more complex locations. Also, good source of creative traps. Reboot from 2013 and what follows are disapproved and shunned, being just generic cover shooter. Comes with its own, massive level-making scene, known collectively as TRLE (after Tomb Raider Level Editor), which by itself is fantastic source of dungeon design, creative traps and excellent puzzles that are all very minable.
  • Mechwarrior, because /tg/ loves Battletech.
    • MechWarrior I is lauded as a classic, and thus the best
    • MechWarrior II is lauded as the best
    • MechWarrior III is lauded as the most engrossing storywise, and thus the best
    • MechWarrior IV is lauded as the latest and greatest, and thus the best
    • MechCommander II is lauded as most like the tabletop, and thus the best
    • MechWarrior: Living Legend is lauded as best for multiplayer, and thus the best
    • MechWarrior Online is the worst
    • MechWarrior V is the newest, therefore both the best AND worst
  • Classic console games
    • Ace Combat In an alternate version of Earth called Strangereal, mute fighter pilots fights against whatever hostile nation or faction of the week send against them, including ludicrous superweapons as flying fortress airships, laser tower, cutting-edge super aircraft and even a spaceship.
    • Jet Set/Grind Radio seems to have enthused one orky drawfag to the highest of possible levels, make of that what you will.
    • Conker's Bad Fur Day Looney Toons for adults, and that's just the start of the batshit craziness.
    • Dungeons and Dragons Order of the Griffon, a game for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 set in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. Uses Basic D&D rules versus the Gold Box games' AD&D rules.
    • Legacy of Kain series Set in a unique fantasy gothic world, the series takes place over ~2000 year timeline that sees you slain and become a vampire demigod Kain in the first game, have you play as the vampire lieutenant Raziel that gets turned into a sentient time-paradox in the second and third game and then switch between the two on an epic, complex and plot ridden story that sees you jump from future to past to present and back again all the while unravelling a conspiracy that spans the material and spectral realms.
    • Metal Gear
    • Oddworld series A classic platformer set in a grimdark alien world of Oddworld, you play as Abe, a slave turned accidental revolutionary turned messiah for his people as he fights the industrial evil of Glukkons and other vile profiteering species out to stripmine Oddworld for sweet moolah. There are 4 games in total, minus the recent remakes. First two games are cult-classics and you should play them, Munch's odyssey was the awkward transition to 3D so ok-ish and Stranger's Wrath picked up the pace but as many a grognard will tell you it does not quite reach the heights of elden times. The New'n Tasty and Soulstorm remakes of the original games are all in all decent.
    • Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Kid Icarus, and Castlevania (the four games series (with one exception see above) share so much in common they deserve to be discussed together). Why? The exploration-heavy nature of the games, the feeling of growing more powerful as you collect enough gear and relics to make an adventuring party jealous, the incredibly memorable boss battles, interesting backstories (Metroid immerses you in backstory at your pace, via scans and lore pickups, leaving much up to your imagination), and providing many ideas for sci fi or fantasy RPG session.
    • Shantae series You play as a cute genie girl that can turn into various Monstergirls (harpy, drider, mermaid, dragon etc.) while platforming and fighting through a colourful middle-east fantasy setting.
    • Spyro series Love Dragons? Then Spyro is for you, though a relatively simple collect-a-thon it features a smorgasbord of colorful and imaginative worlds that range from fantasy to sci-fi and everything in between. Classic trilogy is highly approved while the rebooted series change the focus and tone to be much darker and combat-oriented though with a richer lore as well.

Games that can be used to troll /tg/[edit]

  • Most other MMORPGs. World of Warcraft, as the most successful to date, is especially effective. Special points to Star Wars: The Old Republic for being a massive disappointment for a popular franchise.
  • JRPGs, for often recycling the same plots over and over and having identical structure. Along with of course cringy bad character designs in some cases.
    • Seriously, just play Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy Whatever and you have basically played 95% of JRPGs.
  • Any of the modern Final Fantasy games, which somehow keep getting sequels despite being financial failures. Some fa/tg/uys have a fondness for the early ones, mostly because the first one rips off D&D pretty squarely.
  • Mobile games in general. While they're popular in southeast Asia, China, South Korea and Japan, they have a far more skubby reception here in the West, not helped by nearly all western attempts to enter the market being horrendous and highly exploitative cashgrabs that try to milk as much money as possible before burning out in a year or two, while also targeting vulnerable and feeble-minded people like gambling addicts and children. Some of the same criticisms can also apply to some of the eastern games like Square Enix's.
  • Skyrim, a popular well liked meme game that /v/ contrarians and neckbeards with nostalgia goggles will say is shit. Same goes for Oblivion, Fallout 3 and 4, Starfield (Especially this one) and any future Bethesda RPGs.
  • Mentioning the attention Warhammer 40k games have gotten compared to Warhammer Fantasy is a sore spot for Fantasy fans. With the failure that is Dawn of War III and recent success of Total War: WARHAMMER and Vermintide, you could say the tables have turned. Actually DoW3 by itself is enough for trolling anyway.
  • Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin. Game is mostly fine, but not the best. Unfortunately, its setting is the infamous Age of Skubmar itself. It's part of the reason it didn't do nearly as well as Frontier hoped.
  • Sonic The Hedgehog. The fans are everywhere, and the butthurt is unfathomable.
  • Nintendo games have ultra-dedicated fanbases, and also hardcore haters, except for series like Metroid, Zelda, Mother, or Kid Icarus which are generally respected. Mentioning Pokemon in a positive light or stating the controller of "the best" console they released is a sex toy may cause an internet fight.
  • Games with bad random number generators. Even highly approved of games like Mordheim: City Of The Damned will cause a shitstorm when someone is reminded that a supposed 95% chance to hit can result in four consecutive misses.
  • No Man's Sky - Had one of the most infamous release states of its time (similar to Helldivers' situation, part of the disaster was Sony's fault, but Sean Murray's excessive hyping did not help either), although it got much better as the years passed. Bringing this game up is a good troll move on /v/ as well, but everything's a good troll move on /v/. There is still a really tiny minority that still hates Hello Games to this day.
  • Horizon Zero Dawn - A beautiful looking game with shitty plot and characters, like almost every other game these days! But more seriously it's an Action RPG with Robot Dinosaurs and a weirdly political story, and it's sequel Forbidden West amplifies both it's good and bad points while also making the game kind of boring. Unlikely to cause much a stir on /tg/ by mentioning but /v/ will start arguing as usual.
  • Cyberpunk 2077 - people expected Witcher 3 on steroids, got an (initially) semi-playable beta version. Check the page for more details.
  • Blizzard. JUST. Blizzard. (ACTIVISION Blizzard now, fuckers! The shit train only goes downhill from here!) [Not so fast! Big Daddy Micro$oft bought it out, stay tuned for further developments!]
  • Any recent (late 2010s onward) Ubisoft game will likely draw flak due to devolving into repetitive romping over a map that may be 10 square kilometers while also featuring the same 10 quests/missions over and over again.
  • Helldivers 2. This one is Despite the actual game being kino shit, the attempt at a forced introduction of PSN months after launch (for which Sony actually changed the T&A on the sly, having previously stated that a PSN acc was not needed) had all but killed its goodwill. Sony HAD to remind us that it's current year and that they'll shit on anything they have that is actually good to impress shareholders short-term. Thankfully, Sony hadn't counted on Valve granting refunds and backpedaled, though the game still isn't available in non-PSN regions, which some consider grounds to still boycott the game (even though similar restrictions on Ghost of Tsushima even with PSN being optional means Sony is very unlikely to back down). This situation is a complex one, so give us a minute:
    • The reason why PSN being required is a big deal is that unlike other games requiring 3rd-party accounts, PSN has a lot less countries that it's available in than most, only 73 out of over 200. Worse, even in the countries that can use PSN, some like the United Kingdom require extremely private data like facial scans, and others like Finland and Ukraine require owning a PlayStation 4/5 to even make an account. Also the fact Sony has a notoriously shit security record, which combined with the fact the anticheat is one of those intrusive ones (meaning there's a PSN->nProtect GameGuard->kernel chain for hackers to go buck wild with if Sony inevitably gets breached again) meant that this was a dealbreaker for many. This also would've left anyone who was in a PSN-excluded country like Russia, Philipines, China, a chunk of South America, the Caribbean, nearly all of Africa and most of the Middle East unable to keep playing the game in any way (Sony's terms of service prohibit the use of VPNs). This drove Steam to delist the game from those countries and offered refunds regardless of playtime to wash their hands off Sony's mess.
    • Of course, Arrowhead isn't blameless as their communication issues clearly accentuated the situation and they suck at vetting PR people (mentioning Spitz to a Helldivers fan will cause them to go on a vitriolic rant, regardless of the redemption arc he had later on in the situation he still deserved the firing) which has caused confusion and unnecessary hatred, but they couldn't say no to Sony (regardless whether this was planned months ago or an opportunistic move by the suits) due to them owning the IP so Sony is obviously the bigger villain. Hell, Arrowhead's CEO took the blame for all this and supports people refunding and review bombing over the situation since all he wanted was for HD2 to be a good game.
    • Additional rage and troll potential can be had by friendly reminding the fans that Helldivers 2 is not an indie game but a AA one that had a clever marketing tactic that accentuated the early server issues and the devs being surprised at the sudden success as being hallmarks of a small plucky studio of indie devs. Helldivers 2 thus may also represent corpos trying to parasitize on the rising indie image vs. the cesspool that AAA gaming has become.
    • Needless to say, Sony made a horrible mistake. The game's community proceeded to boycott them by review-bombing both Helldivers games. 2 days later, Sony did what seemed impossible: it backed down and abandoned their forced PSN plans, at least for this game. By the time they did, Helldivers 2 received over 410,000 negative reviews on Steam, pushing it from its 95% Overwhelmingly Positive to 42%, quite close to getting to the dreaded Mostly Negative. The situation keeps evolving, so let's keep a wary eye for now, in case Sony has another pile of shit in its sleeves.
    • All this has changed now that Sony has backpedaled on their decision, marking a win for the community against a corporation.

Games that are universally loathed, so you'll probably have to put in some work if you want to troll with:[edit]

  • Unlike the previous Bethesda RPGs Fallout 76 is actually bad. So if you want to troll people you'll have to pretend to like it. Although, it's so objectively terrible your bait will most likely seem too obvious.
    • Brotherhood of Steel, Interplay's infamous PS2 game. Only the suits in charge loved this (to the point they even Cancelled the original Fallout 3 and tried to develop a sequel to it just to spite the community), and the entirety of the Fallout community loathes it. It played a huge role in the collapse of Interplay and is was fully de-canonized by Bethesda. It has never seen a rerelease.
  • Anthem.
    • Almost all "Games as a Service" games released in the wake of Destiny have a similar, if lesser, level of disdain; it's just that Fallout 76 and Anthem were so garbage on release, and had such a CRPG pedigree, that the trolling mines were quickly completely depleted.
  • Reminding Shadowrun fans of the terrible Shadowrun FPS is not going to earn you any goodwill.
  • Evony and its bazillion clones. They dare call themselves "RTS games" when they're little more than barely-disguised cashgrabs that prey on kiddos and gambling addicts with the SAME power Crunch for decades. Nearly all of them are also online-only too and so have an expiration date. They're one of the main reasons we in the West despise mobile gaming. Thanks to Mehul Patel, an American-Indian(dot not feather) dude who started the first online RTS system...
  • Tiberian Twilight, the MOBA abomination that killed the entire Command & Conquer series. It ticks nearly that is wrong with the so-called "AAA" games, even today: Always online DRM, simplified to the extreme, excessive grind, canon defilement of the worst sort. All that's missing is the pay-2-win. Hell, it can't even be played anymore as the servers are long dead, yet EA continues to sell it on Origin and Steam.
    • To add insult to injury, game was initially supposed to be a multiplayer-only spin-off of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars for the Asian market, named Command & Conquer: Arena, but internal corporate meddling resulted in the game receiving a slapped-on campaign and shipping in a rush.
  • Empire Earth 3, The original Empire Earth is a beloved rts that spans 500.000 years of human history and had 4 kickass campaigns alongside good multiplayer. The third installment watered, dumbed and raped down so much of what made 1 & 2 great that the game was wiped from the publisher's storefront out of embarrassment.
  • Dungeon Keeper Mobile, mentioning this to fans of DK will cause Horned Reaper levels of psychotic rage while everyone else will be struck with a foreboding feeling of impending doom. Tasks that required seconds in 1 & 2 required literal hours and if you didn't spend any money on in-game currency you may as well played the game for decades on normal time. It was also released shortly after Age of Reckoning was shut down, and this shit was the last thing Mythic made before EA killed their studio. The worst thing about the whole mess is that this monstrosity managed to keep running for 8 FUCKING YEARS before it was finally killed off in 2022.
  • Overlord: Fellowship of Evil, the game has none of the charm that made Overlord 1 & 2 great and even as a standalone thing is is bland and forgettable. About the only good thing about it is that it killed Overlord before EA got to it, so there's that at least.
    • Special mention goes to Skull and Bones which was supposed to be AC: Black Flag but with the modern and assassin & templar stuff removed in order to focus on pure piracy. What we got was a bland, uninspired and buggy mess that was laughable compared to Black Flag. The turd on top of the shit-cake was the claim by Ubisoft's CEO that it was a "quadruple A game", earning it rightful derision and scorn.
  • Silent Hill Pachinko (Japan's not-Gambling), if you doubt that hell and evil exist, look no further than this.
    • This basically applies to Konami in general. They thoroughly destroyed their reputation back in the early 2010s and the repercussions their misdeeds brought upon them can still be felt today. Despite their recent attempts to clean up their act, a lot of people won't forget nor forgive what they did to Hideo Kojima.

The Game List That People Copypasta[edit]

Every so often, someone posts on /tg/: "Wow, you guys are so smart and cool; can you recommend some video games to play for those hours when I'm not playing tabletop?". It happens so often that people have made copypasta for the occasion, even image copypasta.

You will find a lot of those games on Good Old Games, DRM free, for 6 or 9 bucks. Or for free if you pirate, which can often be justified by the original creators leaving the development company so all the Profit goes to people who don't deserve it. Your choice.

For any video game that someone felt was good enough for a full page on this wiki, see Video Games

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